Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 15 - Evidence - January 29, 2007
TORONTO, Monday, January 29, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 1:04 p.m. to examine and report upon Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators and guests, I am very pleased that the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights is here in Toronto to conclude our hearings. After these hearings, we will complete our report and file it with the Senate.
We were asked to report upon Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children. We have studied the international mechanisms to further human rights in the world and in Canada.
When we looked at the general machinery of the international human rights system, we came to the conclusion that there were certain shortcomings that needed to be addressed. With the consent of the Senate, we embarked on this particular study on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Canada's implementation of the convention. We have looked at other aspects of the rights of children as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
I am pleased to see that Senator Pearson is here today. Senator Pearson left our committee because of the discrimination of age of retirement. As deputy chair, Senator Pearson was involved in this committee, and continues to follow our hearings. We welcome you here today, Senator Pearson.
I am pleased to see that Senator Munson, Senator Nancy Ruth and Senator Poy are here today and we are waiting for Senator Dallaire, who indicated he would be coming, but obviously has been delayed.
Faye Mishna, Associate Professor, Toronto University: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, honourable senators.
A fundamental aspect of Canadian society is its commitment to promoting and practising human rights. The widespread victimization of Canadian children and youth however, threatens this core value and compromises its development. Bullying is one of the most pervasive forms of aggression in the educational system today. It constitutes abuse and threatens children's human rights by compromising their safety and welfare. It is a key issue in Canada. While the numbers vary, research tells us that between 10 per cent and 30 per cent of Canadian children are bullied at school at least some of the time. Over 50 per cent of Canadian children say that they feel left out in school some of the time.
In a recent World Health Organization survey, Canada ranked a dismal twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh out of 35 countries on measures of bullying and victimization respectively. Across all categories, bullying and victimization in Canada consistently ranked at or below the middle of the international group. Our youth have a higher rate of being bullied than the international average in almost all rankings, and Canadian boys have a higher rate of bullying others.
Our position on the international stage has slipped relative to other countries since the last survey; however, our rate of victimization has remained stable. Other countries are doing a better job in preventing and dealing with bullying. It is interesting that many of countries have national campaigns to address bullying.
There are several issues that exacerbate bullying and have to be recognized. There is a pervasive and severe form of bullying motivated by intolerance to others based on actual or perceived membership in a particular group known as "bias-based bullying.'' This type of bullying results from and reinforces discrimination and marginalization based on characteristics such as sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, race and disability. This type of bullying threatens the appreciation of diversity that we value as Canadians and clearly threatens the rights of youth. Homophobic attitudes, perceptions, and stereotypes within society reinforce bullying in children when it is pervasive and accepted in society. It marginalizes these students even more. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer are significantly more likely to be victimized, to experience prejudice and discrimination, both within their schools, within their families and in the broader community. Ethnocultural and socioeconomic status also can instigate bullying. Canadian visible minority youth are more than three times as likely to be discriminated against as non-visible minority youth. Canadian youth in lower income families are more likely to have negative experiences and experience bullying in school. Canadian youth who have learning disabilities and other special needs in the education system are also more likely to have negative experiences including bullying in school.
Another problem about bullying is it is seriously under-reported. Even though we tell the children to tell the adults, many children do not and when they do tell adults, it may be more traumatic for them if the adults do not respond to them with empathy and with concrete protection. Research has found that telling an adult does not always help, and may aggravate the situation. Victimization is thus silenced and normalized and consequently, the bullied fails to recognize that he is she is being victimized, and the adult does not perceive it as bullying or as a serious problem that must be addressed.
The Internet and other forms of information technology have become the new frontier for bullying. As the number of children who use the internet, cell phones, email, MSN, chat rooms and social networking sites increases, so does its negative use. Cyber abuse is increasing dramatically, and it encompasses such things as cyber-bullying, cyber stalking, cyber sexual solicitation and pornography. This is really the new schoolyard in which children are bullied and abused.
Recent research tell us that many Canadian children experience unwanted sexual advances and sexually inappropriate discussions in chat rooms, and these are youth ranging from nine years of age. Strangers who want to make real life meetings approach the children on the internet. Cyber bullying is widespread among Canadian children and youth and often promotes sexist homophobic and racist discrimination.
Most children and youth do not report cyber bullying, for a couple of reasons. They are scared that their computer privileges will be taken away. The anonymity of the internet makes them feel it is impossible to locate who is doing it. In addition, because it is often not done in school, they are not clear about whom to tell and who is responsible. Clearly, the continuing pervasiveness of traditional bullying and the growth of cyber bullying signal a call to action. We need to protect Canada's children and youth.
I am not going to detail the many devastating ways that all forms of bullying can affect children and youth. I want to emphasize that bullying in all forms is dangerous, from the apparently minor forms of exclusion and gossip to the dramatic physical assaults; they all have devastating effects.
Children who bully and who are victimized experience far reaching negative repercussions in their academic, social, psychological, emotional development and physical health. Most children who bully and are victimized often have long-term multi-systemic engagement with mental health, juvenile justice, and special education and social service institutions. Bullying affects the whole community.
Another important point is the power and aggression that are central to bullying are central to other forms of aggression in the workplace, intimate relationships, child abuse, sexual harassment and elder abuse. There is a developmental pathway that needs to be addressed. It does not just stop with childhood bullying.
Since bullying unfolds within a social context, only a comprehensive and holistic approach can ensure that the individual developmental and systemic-ecological needs of children and youth are addressed.
Teachers, parents and all adults involved with children and youth require support and education. A federal children's commission could play an important role in coordinating and implementing policies, guidelines and training. A children's commission would be an invaluable resource, I believe, for national prevention and intervention. I think it is imperative that the Government of Canada take international leadership regarding victimization.
Corinne Robertshaw, Founder/Coordinator, Repeal 43 Committee, Toronto: Good afternoon, senators, and thank you for the invitation to appear here today.
I have submitted a brief dated January 22, 2007 and include a brief submitted to the Minister of Justice in 1994. That brief contains some appendices that might be of interest to you. The January 22 brief deals mainly with section 43 of the Criminal Code and article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. You will be familiar with section 43 of the Criminal Code that justifies reasonable force for the correction of children, and includes schoolteachers, parents, and substitute parents. There is a great deal to be said about section 43 not because it is so complicated, but because so many people misunderstand it.
Simply put, our position is that section 43 is wrong in principle and harmful in practice. We are not criticizing or judging individual parents who hit or spank their children. We criticize a law that justifies hitting and spanking, a law that tells parents, children, and the general public that hitting and spanking is rightful, that it is an approved method of discipline.
If we want a world that respects human rights, we have to start by respecting the basic human rights of children; a child's right to physical integrity, the right not to be hit. The right of physical integrity is set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court of Canada describes that right as a profound right, as indeed, it is. Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires parties to the convention to protect children against ". . . all forms of physical and mental violence. . . .'' I stress that it says all forms, which includes physical and mental violence, and that it is violence or injury or abuse. I stress that because we are not just dealing with so-called abuse of children, we are dealing with any level of violence. We have to see violence from the child's point of view, not from the adult's view.
The constitutional challenge to section 43 ended in a split decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. The majority judgment, like the convention, deals with the child's fundamental rights and I think it is important for the committee to understand some of the main reasons we think that judgment is wrong.
It is at this point that the issue becomes complicated. There is no way I can get into all of it, but in my submission, I have covered some of the main points. Let me point out that surprisingly enough, the Supreme Court of Canada majority judgment makes no mention of the UN committee that supervises or implements the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That committee, as you know, has made two recommendations to Canada, one in 1995 and again in 2003, in which it strongly recommended that Canada repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code. When the UN committee referred to it in 2003, it stated it was deeply disappointed that Canada had not taken any action to repeal section 43 of the code.
It is surprising to me that the Supreme Court majority judgment made absolutely no reference whatsoever to that UN committee or to its two recommendations. Instead, it refers to a committee that oversees the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. With respect to that covenant, the Supreme Court recommended against corporal punishment of children in schools. The Supreme Court judgment outlawed or banned corporal punishment of children by schoolteachers. The judgment does not refer to the relevant committee, which is the committee on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
There are a number of problems with the majority judgment, which talks about an intelligible standard of section 43; it is not an intelligible standard. The new Supreme Court criteria, except for the criteria to ban objects and blows to the head, are confusing and very subjective. Minor hitting and symbolic hitting is all that is allowed. That is unrealistic in terms of punishment. People who believe in punishment and spanking children do not consider a symbolic slap to be punishment. In practice, such minor hitting would not be prosecuted. If it is minor and symbolic it is de minimis by definition.
The age limitations are arbitrary and allow minor punishment of children between the ages of two years and 12 years of age. A 23-month-old cannot be hit but once the child turns two years of age then he or she can be hit. Arbitrary distinctions in age are inevitable in some cases. The age to obtain a driver's license and the age to purchase alcohol or have sexual relations are not in the same category as physical integrity, which as the court itself said, is a profound right.
The court does not recognize the link between corporal punishment and child abuse, and there is plenty of research showing that link. On the issue of a child's dignity, the Supreme Court says, yes, dignity is a fundamental aspect of fundamental human rights, but as far as the child is concerned, the child's dignity is judged from the viewpoint of an adult and not the child's viewpoint.
Another point is that the Supreme Court failed to realize that when you open a door to minor or symbolic hitting, it is very easy for that to escalate to greater force. In a sense, it sets a trap for parents, and the court is concerned about parents being prosecuted.
When the law states that it is lawful to deliver a minor slap to your child, that minor slap, in so many cases is going to become a major slap. Then the law, according to the Supreme Court, is going to step in and prosecute. By justifying corporal punishment under section 43, the court encourages the parent to use corporal punishment, and then when it exceeds the minor symbolic slap, the parents are put in the real danger of prosecution.
The court brushes aside the significance of justification. Section 43 says that reasonable force is justified and under the Ogg-Moss case, the Supreme Court clearly says justified means rightful conduct. The Supreme Court majority decision brushes that aside and says no, "justified'' does not really have that meaning.
In the majority judgment, the court mentions more than four times that Parliament has chosen to keep section 43. I would say, Madam Chair, Parliament has not decided on section 43; it has never been debated. We hope that your committee hearings and recommendations will get it to Parliament where it should be decided.
Psychological harm caused by corporal punishment is hardly mentioned by the majority decision. What they are talking about mostly when they mention harm is bodily harm.
Another point that they raise deals with the defence for using reasonable force for restraint. They used the example of putting a child in a time-out chair. In addition, they are suggesting that if you repeal section 43, using reasonable force, and it always has to be reasonable force to put a child in a time-out chair, is going to be an assault for which there will be no defence. Under the common-law, it is clear that there are two defences in the situation. There is a defence for correction and correction means hitting, and there is a separate and distinct defence for using reasonable force for restraint or control. If the court is saying that it does not want to repeal section 43 because if it does, that is going to repeal the defence for reasonable restraint and control, then we say, in that case repeal section 43 and insert in the Criminal Code a specific defence saying reasonable force for restraint and control is allowed. I am not recommending that, because it is common-place, as any parent knows, that obviously you spend a fair amount of time restraining and controlling your children. You will find no cases in which section 43 has been used as a defence for restraint and control. It is used as a defence for hitting and slapping and kicking, and hitting with a hammer on the head in one case, an old case, but nonetheless, it is relevant.
Basically these points that are made by the majority judgment are not well taken, and I have to say in my opinion and in the opinion of many others and in the opinion of three other judges on the Supreme Court of Canada, the majority was wrong.
Stuart Shanker, Professor, York University: I wear two hats, so that means I have to speak about each hat for three minutes.
With one hat on, I run a developmental research institute at York University. Fraser Mustard, who retired in September, passed me the other hat when he asked me to take over the council that he created, The Founders' Network. That council tries to translate what we have learned at our research institute into population-based programs.
What have we learned? We began our specialization on children with autism and learned that approximately 50 per cent of all children in Ontario with autism are not diagnosed until the age of five. At the age of five it is possible for us to do some things with intensive therapy. It is very costly and not terribly effective. What happens is parts of the child's brain that have not been impaired pick up tasks that would normally be performed by a different part of the brain. It is like a prosthetic approach.
We have discovered that if we get to the child sooner we can get the part of the brain that was impaired back online. That is the goal of our research and that is where the science is today. If we can get to a child before the age of three, and ideally before the age of two, in about 84 per cent of the cases we can restore the child to a healthy brain developmental trajectory.
I do not know if the senators are aware of this, but Canada is now the world leader at the early identification of autism. A scientist in Nova Scotia and another in Alberta have established a protocol that works at the age of 12 months, and they are pushing that back, hoping to get it down to six months. At six months, what we can do extraordinary things to help the autistic child.
Autism used to be a very rare disorder. It is now at about 1 per cent of the general population. This is very frightening and because it is so frightening, I was asked to sit on a task force at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to gain more information on this serious disorder.
Our results indicate that about 17 per cent of children in urban centres in the U.S. have a clinically diagnosable developmental disorder. Another 20 per cent have what we refer to as functional disorders. That means that the child might be diagnosed in Ontario with something called PDD. PDD means there is something wrong; we do not really know what it is; it not serious enough to get a DSM classification.
Another 25 per cent of children have biological impairments, which, if addressed young, could probably be ameliorated, if not prevented. If not addressed, by the time they get into school, this will significantly impair their capacity to learn, to pay attention, to understand what other people are thinking and saying and doing.
In the U.S., and I suspect Canada is not much different, about 62 per cent of children have biological problems when they enter the school system and 75 per cent or more of the cases could have been significantly mitigated.
Our problem is really quite simple. Can we take our techniques that have been developed in these very intensive clinical environments and transfer them to a general population-based program? We have begun experimenting on that and, in fact, the answer is yes, you can. The way you do it is through parents.
Essentially, what you do is educate parents to identify early signs of attention, language, motor movement or cognitive challenges. These challenges can emerge as early as two months. We must educate the parents and once they recognize a challenge they must take appropriate actions. All of this can be effectively regulated through parental centres where parents have contact with highly trained ECEs, early childhood educators. In other countries, ECEs are child specialists.
That brings me to my other hat, to the council hat. The council's mandate is to translate science into action. What do we really know? What are we learning from neuroscience? How can this information be translated into effective measures in such a way that every single child has access to the same educational opportunities? How can we ensure that as children enter the school system they will be biologically prepared to pay attention, and understand what behaviour is expected of them.
The other thing that we do is we look at nations around the world to find out who is doing a good job of this, what we can learn from them, and what we can translate into the Canadian system. This is a dynamic process.
The result of these two activities is that the science of child development in the 21st century is going to be totally unlike what it was in the 20th century. In the 20th century people still believed that how a child turns out is a function of the genes that that child has inherited, and that is simply false. We know it is false. Genes do not work that way, but as a function of the environment in which the child is raised. What scientists are beginning to learn now is how to optimize the ecology in which the child is raised. This ecology includes the child's family, the school environment and their peers. Through all of this, what we can do is even with those children that are born with significant genetic deficits; we can correct these if we get to them early enough.
Where does Canada stand in all this? I think we have a unique role to play and I think it is because of Fraser Mustard, who is an extraordinary human being.
We have access to the finest programs in the world. We are learning what they are doing and showing them how to improve their programs. If we are going to enable our children to have the capacity to deal with the formidable challenges of the 21st century they will have to have achieved a level of literacy which does not exist in our country and is even worse in the U.S. In the United States, approximately 50 per cent of the population cannot understand the instruction, "Do not take this medicine without food.'' In Canada that figure is 42 per cent. We can change that frightening percentage and this committee can be instrumental in bringing about that change.
If you think about the complexity of the issues that we are grappling with, we have to do everything we can to enable children to have the core capacities when they enter school: the capacity to pay attention, to absorb information, to understand patterns, to understand language. We have to try to deliver this for every child.
There are examples where countries have done this successfully on a population basis and Canada is not one of them. In a study released a couple of months ago, Canada came in last. We spend the least percentage of GDP on early child development than every developed nation.
There is room for improvement, but on the other hand, we have incredible scientists so we need someone to inspire our country, and that is this committee.
The Chairman: Thank you very much professor, for that confidence and your comments. We are going to go to questioning, but I wanted to say — just to ask you, Professor Shanker, to clarify, you said we are dead last. Who is first?
Mr. Shanker: Sweden is number one and spends approximately 2 per cent — a little over 2 per cent of GDP, followed by Finland. Canada spends .025 per cent.
The Chairman: Do those studies take into account the population variations? We learned while in Sweden that the new immigrant base children are not receiving the needed resources. There is a disparity between traditional services and those that are out of reach for the immigrants.
Mr. Shanker: Senator, the secret to Sweden's success was that they were a homogeneous society with a long history of investing in children's rights. What they were not equipped to deal with was this influx of immigrants. What we see in Sweden is a rapidly deteriorating situation for that sector of the population.
Interestingly, the country that Fraser and I have become most interested in is Cuba and on another occasion, I could relate that story to you. What Cuba has done with its three primary cultures is extraordinary. The government mandated that every single child must have equal access to these services. The incredible result is that it was done on a voluntary basis; there is no forced attendance. They have a 99 per cent uptake. We are shifting our focus a little bit from the Nordic countries and trying to look at Cuba as an example of a nation that is successful in this regard.
The Chairman: That is the point that I was going to make. Cuba may be one end of it, but there is also a totally different society. I mean command and control is still there, so the response would be different.
Mr. Shanker: This is Fraser's point. Fraser's point is these programs seem to work best when you have a dictator.
The Chairman: I think that is important as to how a society responds and how a country reaches.
Mr. Shanker: I agree.
The Chairman: With the diversity of population in Canada, with the geographic diversity, with the federal-provincial system that we have and with an Aboriginal base and some of the dilemmas we have there, how do we tackle this problem?
Mr. Shanker: One of the things that we do in the council is we are going across the country designing programs for the different areas.
The first thing that you have to pay attention to is the cultural distinctiveness of these communities you have just mentioned. Secondly, the disorders that we are seeing in these communities are very distinctive. For example, in Ontario we see extremely high rates of ADHD. In Aboriginal communities obviously we see high rates of FASD. We see chronic depression in very young children, and we are able to identify that disorder quickly now.
The programs have to be worked out on the ground; they have to fit the community's needs. I see the federal and provincial governments acting more as mediators rather than trying to come up with a one-size-fits all program. If we go down that road it will not work.
Certain basic scientific principles do not change. How do you design a culturally specific program based on the scientific principles, but delivered by and related to that community?
Senator Nancy Ruth: I am going to pick up on the one-size-fits all program. Dr. Mishna, I read your paper with interest and I was interested that it contains very limited reference to gender or race analysis.
I am wondering if I am supposed to conclude that there are no serious differences between boys and girls, lesbians or gays, whites and non-whites.
Ms. Mishna: That is an excellent question. In fact, there is limited research. In terms of gender, there is research that suggests that boys and girls are bullied and bully differently. In fact, until recently research showed that boys bullied a lot more than girls did and that is because non-direct bullying was not considered bullying.
When you include the ways the girls tend to bully, the rates are more similar. Boys are victimized a bit more and bully more, but they do it in a more physically aggressive ways, physically fighting, that kind of thing. Girls tend to be bullied and bully through exclusion and gossip; all those things that were not characterized as bullying, but instead are characterized as a girls' nasty personality, which I think was very problematic, because it personifies the behaviour.
To this day in our research, we have found that very sensitive adults will still call a girl "nasty.''
Senator Nancy Ruth: They refer to the girls as "bitchy.''
Ms. Mishna: Yes, in one of my studies, the adults referred to the girls in grade 4 "capital B bitches.'' They did not realize that this was a form of aggression. In terms of gender, there is more recognition than before and there is some understanding that this has to be addressed. The problem is that kind of bullying, even though we give lip service to it, we do not really take it seriously. The schools do not have policies in place to deal with this problem. Teachers say they do not know how to deal with it. It is harder to recognize and it is more subjective. I think what Ms. Robertshaw said is very important. We tend to look at it objectively. If somebody is beaten up we say that is bullying. If somebody feels hurt because of hurt feeling or is excluded, we say well, that is not bullying, but if they subjectively feel it that is very important.
In terms of racist, homophobic, lesbian, gay, and transgender bullying there is not enough research on that subject. When we talk about bullying one of the problems is a homogeneous bullying and what is missed is that the behaviours might be the same, but the motivation is very different; this is important. We really need to take more seriously the exclusion and the bullying.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I guess I am asking you to do that. I find it very irritating to read papers like this. I do not see any recommendations that address gender and race, apart from a reference to those who are marginalized. I was wondering if you have any recommendations that take into account gender and race differences and if not, why not?
Ms. Mishna: I guess I did not put them in specifically, but I included them in the groups that are marginalized.
Senator Nancy Ruth: That is everybody then. That is a one size fits all again.
Ms. Mishna: Well, I do not feel enough research has been done. I think what we need to do is take that seriously.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I hope the McCains give you lots of money to do it.
The Chairman: I take it that was not a question.
Senator Nancy Ruth: No, it is an email though.
Senator Poy: Professor Shanker, you mentioned that 62 per cent of newborn children have biological problems.
Mr. Shanker: Yes, 62 per cent of newborn children have varying degrees of biological problems.
Senator Poy: You also said that genes do not control the way we grow up.
Senator Nancy Ruth: That is correct.
Senator Poy: It is environment.
Mr. Shanker: That is correct.
Senator Poy: Are biological problems genetic?
Mr. Shanker: Yes, the problems can be genetic but not necessarily 100 per cent of the time. There can be environmental causes, as we know: poisons, drugs, but a great percentage of them are genetic. As it happens, many of those genetic problems can also be prevented by changing the gestation conditions.
Senator Poy: So what you are saying is the gestation period is very important.
Mr. Shanker: Yes.
Senator Poy: And right after babies are born.
Mr. Shanker: Yes.
Senator Poy: The condition that they grow up would be equally important or more important than genes.
Mr. Shanker: Yes, how the genes function will be in large part determined by these gestational early experiences.
Senator Poy: Are we able to determine the moment the child is born that there are problems?
Mr. Shanker: Yes, in some cases.
Senator Poy: I see.
Mr. Shanker: Yes, we can make that evaluation at birth or very early on in the child's life.
Senator Poy: How is our government dealing with these problems?
Mr. Shanker: Our government has been placed in an impossible situation. The Ontario government has bravely wanted to support a large number of these families. We cannot afford what we are currently doing, let alone the expansion the government has just promised, let alone help all the other special interest groups. The problem we face as a society is that we are based in a medical model that is treatment oriented rather than preventative oriented. We rely heavily on the data accumulated by people like James Heckman showing the cost effectiveness of intensive preventive programs.
The government has correctly said we need evidence-based research before we can make these kinds of significant investments. Scientists in Canada have to be encouraged to go down that road. Some have, but not very many.
Senator Poy: Do they perform these tests the moment the babies are born? I am thinking back 30-odd years ago when I had my children. My children were given the okay by the pediatrician and that was it.
How detailed is the pediatric check?
Mr. Shanker: Senator Poy, these are difficult questions to answer honestly.
There is a scientist in the U.S. who is proposing that some of these disorders can be diagnosed in utero using ultrasound to detect irregularities in rhythm patterns.
There is such a range of variability in newborns, that it is not until about between two and four months that we begin to see a kind of certain stability where we can say this is not something that the child is going to outgrow or we should do something, even if we are wrong.
There is a problem with the pediatric system today. The pediatricians are overworked and underpaid. They are also under-trained. We have a situation in the country, not simply in Ontario, where we have these silos where we may have the pediatrician seeing the child, I do not know, at immunization and then you have an early child educator seeing the child and the two are not talking to each other. The pediatricians cannot make proper diagnosis of a child during a 15- minute examination.
As we shift to a preventative model, we have to think of ways where the pediatrician can get to know the child and where the early child educator gets to understand a little bit about pediatrics. We have to build these bridges.
Senator Poy: It is very popular for midwives to deliver babies. Do you see a problem of these children being missed?
Mr. Shanker: That is a good question.
Senator Poy: You do not have to answer the question if you are not sure of the answer.
Mr. Shanker: Can I answer it a different way?
Senator Poy: Yes, please.
Mr. Shanker: What we have learned is that in order to pick up subtle signs we need to have the time to do so. As an example, if a child responds to funny faces, but the child never initiates, never tries to get you into an interaction that is a very serious sign. It is not a sign you can pick up in a 15-minute consult. It is only something you get a feel for over months.
We need is a system where whoever is working with the child knows the child and knows the subtle signs that they should be looking for that indicate here is a problem, let us go in and let us try to build up whatever it is is causing this constriction. Is that a fair enough answer?
Senator Poy: Yes, thank you.
Senator Munson: The Supreme Court made its decision, and the word "supreme'' being the final arbiter of what is happening in our society. Do people believe that the debate is over because the Supreme Court made that decision? I have not seen any polls or heard of people saying that they just cannot buy into the decision. I think it is a horrible majority decision.
Where do we go with this? I mean, the last government did not pay attention to it. This government does not seem to be paying attention to it. We are paying attention to it because you are bringing it to us and you came to us in our hearings in Winnipeg on that issue.
You talked about the new frontier of bullying, cyberspace, and dealing with the new schoolyard. I would like to have specifics of what young people are saying to each other, how that person becomes frightened or bullied, and how parents should deal with that issue.
We have a Senate committee dealing with autism. There is a prevailing view that there should be a national autism spectrum strategy. What should be the federal government's involvement in this in bringing all parties together? It is not, as you know, a level playing field across this country.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Just so you both know, there is a bill in the Senate to strike down section 43.
Ms. Robertshaw: Senator Munson, it is a good question because you can say that the Supreme Court has made a decision on constitutional basis. The court can say that this section of the Criminal Code is constitutional, but it does not follow that this section of the code is good public policy. The judgment does not close the door on any discussion as to whether we should or should not repeal section 43.
The second point is there was a strong dissenting judgment in that case by three judges, all of whom decided that section 43 violates section 7 of the Charter and/or section 15 of the Charter. Justice Binnie agreed that section 15 of the Charter is violated by section 43, but then he went to section 1 of the Charter under which, as you know, you can violate section 7 or section 15 and then justify it as being necessary. However, you still have the fact that three judges found that section 43 violated those sections of the Charter.
The public knows very little about this decision of the Supreme Court of Canada other than the January 2004 headlines that said that the spanking law was upheld.
In addition, if you read, as occasionally you find, some newspaper accounts of the charge of assault for corporal punishment, you will find that the article will state that the person is charged with assault, but under the law the person can use reasonable force.
The public is fairly ignorant about this law. You have a Supreme Court decision that is not binding. It is up to Parliament to decide. The Supreme Court decision comes back to the idea that Parliament has chosen, Parliament has decided; it has not. As Senator Nancy Ruth pointed out, there is Senator Hervieux-Payette's Bill S-207 currently before the Senate. It has been referred to your committee, your committee will be dealing with it, and I presume, maybe sometime in the spring. Perhaps, I will be back talking to you again.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I do not think it has been referred.
The Chairman: Yes, it has.
Senator Munson: Let us get on with it; I am very impatient about these things.
Ms. Mishna: In terms of cyber bullying, often good friends will give each other passwords, so a friend might go in as somebody else and bully others and they think it is the other person doing it. Other examples are sending nasty emails, setting up websites and having people come on and say negative things about this person, somebody taking a picture of somebody in a locker room and sending it all over the web.
Kids are not telling, so we have to find a way to help them tell. Parents need to be educated in this matter and understand that they should not get rid of the computer privileges; that is the way the children interact. We say it is not real, it is virtual, but it is their way of communicating. Parents need to know they can contact their internet service providers who can often find out who is doing the cyber bullying. We need to work with parents. There is also blocking software, and that helps to some degree, but many kids can get around it and it can block good as well as bad things. It is important to contact the schools too, because often there is this feeling that because the problem does not happen in the school, it is not a school problem. I think the schools are recognizing the problem occurs both in the school and at home. We need to work with the bullied children and not punish them for the acts of other children.
Mr. Shanker: There is something going on with autism. It scares us; we need to understand what it is. We have extraordinary scientists. Canada could be the world leader in understanding why we are seeing this increase in numbers.
I worry that autism is attracting a disproportionate amount of attention. We know that 5 per cent to 7 per cent of all our children have a language deficit. We can tell you the most outrageous things that happen to kids that enter school with language problems.
What we have to get across is that this national autism agenda does not detract from the very broad problems that our children face. We can do much more to address these problems.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Is it true that autism is mainly a boy's disease? I understand that the ratio of boys to girls is four to one; is that correct?
Mr. Shanker: Yes, senator you are correct.
Senator Munson: This committee had 15 scientists before us a few weeks before Christmas. It was wonderful because during our discussions the scientists learned from one another.
The present government has a modest approach and hopes to establish a national forum of scientists and other experts to tackle this problem.
Mr. Shanker: Senator, I would be grateful if this committee could help to establish an exchange of information system. I understand that people in one part of the country are unaware of what other scientists and experts are doing in this field.
The other thing that concerns us is the lack of flow of information between our scientific community and our community agencies. This is a bi-directional flow. The truth is, the scientists can learn not just as much, probably more from the community people, than the other way around. We have to establish both of those flows.
Senator Munson: We learned a lot from the young men and women with autism who spoke to us; they have the story to tell.
Hon. Landon Pearson, Former Senator: It is something that ties all your presentations together. I have been struck by the work of the World Health Organization on the social determinates of health and the piece that Clyde Hertzman is involved in, which you would obviously know about; the knowledge network on early childhood development.
In Mr. Hertzman's draft, he defines what you just said. We are not talking about a maturational model of child development, but a transactional model. It was the first time I had seen that term, but the idea incorporated in that goes with PREVNET, which I am associated. It is concerned with relationships; it is what children find themselves within that will make the difference.
The prevention of corporal punishment is something to do with the understanding of the nurturing role of the family and others in the prevention of violence. We are trying to prevent violence and therefore we must focus on these important family relationships. These relationships are significant in the prevention of violence.
Mr. Shanker: Senator, would you like to join our council? That statement was very helpful.
The Chairman: With that nomination speech. I would like to thank the witnesses for their presentations, both in person and the previous materials that have been forwarded to us.
I think some of the points have reinforced what we have heard in other areas of Canada, but it has been said succinctly from your point of view and no doubt your words will echo in our report somewhere, so we thank you for coming today. If there is anything else you wish to share with us, you can send it to the clerk as we are in the process of writing our report. It may be helpful. Thank you for your presentations and your presence here today.
On our next panel we have before us from World Vision Canada Mr. Chris Derksen-Hiebert, Interim Director for Advocacy and Education. I know he was called in at the last minute due to an illness of one of the other members. We thank you for coming on short notice. We will certainly take that into account and gauge our questions accordingly.
We also have with us from UNICEF Canada Ms. Lisa Wolff, Director of Advocacy and Education. I know you participated in the filing of the Special Report of Rapporteurs, so it is good to have you here to give us your perspective from UNICEF. We also have with us Ms. Laura Rothman from the Family Service Association of Toronto.
Laura Rothman, Family Service Association of Toronto: Senators, a large part of my work at Family Service Association of Toronto includes coordinating Campaign 2000, which is a cross-Canada coalition that has been monitoring the progress or lack of progress on the 1989 unanimous House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. As you all know, we have not made very much progress at all. In fact, despite continued economic growth, Canada's record on child poverty is actually slightly worse than it was in 1989.
I am going to refer to our annual report card that we have been publishing since 1992. I should say we include more than 110 organizations. We always say we are an unusual virtual coalition, everybody from the psychiatrists to the autoworkers to low-income people, faith communities, et cetera, and many others.
We have had cyclical variations reflecting economic recessions and recoveries, but nearly 1.2 million children in Canada remains in poverty. That rate of one in six is tenacious. This figure does not include the shameful situation in First Nation communities, where one in every four children is growing up in poverty.
The Canadian Parliament and all the provincial legislatures ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Each government recognizes the importance of an adequate standard of living for children and sets a very important framework.
I did take the time to look at your interim report, and I know that the committee as well as the coalition on the rights of the child strongly supports the recommendation, as do we. We agree that the convention needs to be part of Canadian law. It needs to be considered as we make proposals, legislation, and agreements. They have the weight of the law but are in some way extra legal. Maybe that is not the right word, but they are not part of the legislative process per se. We need to give teeth to the convention.
Child poverty in Canada varies widely among provinces and among groups. As you probably know, one out of two recent immigrant children live in a low-income family. One out of three visible minority children and about 40 per cent of Aboriginal identity children live in poverty.
Poverty is dynamic. We know people who fall in and out of poverty and a small number remains in poverty for more than four years. We are not looking at the same situation as the U.S. in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. We have a tremendous depth of poverty.
We may have a child benefit, but we have also had social assistance go down in most parts of the country. The average low-income two-parent family is $10,400 below the poverty line. Climbing out of poverty is a tough one.
The other counterintuitive fact that people do not realize is that about one in three children living in low-income families live in a family where at least one parent is working full-time.
We need to pursue many strategies in a poverty reduction strategy for Canada. UNICEF made a very important challenge in its last report card on child poverty. It challenged the industrialized nations with rates above 10 per cent to set a timetable to bring those rates to below 10 per cent, and then to below 5 per cent. Four or five European countries have met UNICEFs challenge and we have some good examples here in Canada. Quebec and Newfoundland have adopted poverty reduction strategies. We are calling on the Government of Canada, with the provinces, territories and First Nations to take up this challenge, to set some goals and timetables, and to achieve what we know can be achieved. The U.K. has made its first target of about 25 per cent reduction in child poverty by its first timeline.
We work closely with our partners in Make Poverty History, which I am sure many of you are familiar with, and which perhaps Chris Derksen-Hiebert may talk about or others. Make Poverty History has adopted not only three international demands, but the fourth demand, which is to end child poverty in Canada.
Lisa Wolff, Director, Advocacy and Education, UNICEF — Canada: I am pleased to be here today, senators and former senators, and to convey UNICEF Canada's enthusiasm for the insightful recommendations proposed in the interim report.
We are here to affirm the depth and the potential success of the recommendations. We believe in the potential they have in making an impact on children's rights in Canada. We will share some nuanced information and reflections about the recommendations. We feel that if they are acted upon we will have real momentum for progressive realization of child rights in Canada. We are convinced that unless Canada takes specific steps to build more effective legal and administrative measures and mechanisms for implementation of children's rights, they will languish in piecemeal legislative change dependent on the unpredictable goodwill of parliamentarians, in jurisdictional fractures, and in uncertain accountability.
The committee was authorized to examine Canada's obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and whether Canada's legislation, as it applies to children, meets our obligations under the convention. We believe that Canada's legal and institutional arrangements as a protective enabling framework for the rights of children have gaps and shortcomings that only a basic suite of implementing mechanisms can address with any real cohesion and impact.
Ratification was only the first step in the process of compliance and needs to be reinforced by a range of measures that will remedy any perceived consequences of hasty ratification and address evolving issues.
With several key implementation mechanisms in place, notably, enabling legislation, a strong national institution for children, and a buoyant political and bureaucratic capacity, Canada can equip itself to meet its obligations with more vigour, with transparency and with participation.
The need to focus on mechanisms for implementation is recognized not only in the historical trail of concluding observations tendered by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, but also in its current efforts to engage and focus state parties through the review of upcoming country reports and ongoing dialogue on implementation mechanisms.
The UN Secretary General's Study on Violence Against Children includes in its recommendations, the establishment of an independent institution for children. Canada adopted this is November 2006. The plan of action adopted at the General Assembly Special Session five years ago calls for the effective implementation of the convention. We are in the mid-decade year where we are looking back at our agreements and our agreements call for the effective implementation of the convention.
The need to focus on mechanisms for implementation is revealed in those commitments and through recent research conducted by UNICEF and various partners.
As a global organization guided with the convention, we are happy to be here today to share some of these insights from this emerging research. We do not have all the answers, but we have learned a few things.
If I can just share some of those final thoughts in this process, which is just the first stage in a project to advance children's rights. I hope that with these comments we also affirm our belief that these recommendations are indeed actionable.
We elucidate a number of good practises in federal and common-law states in our research and I can share them with the committee as well. Our first recommendation concerns the implementation of international human rights obligations in Canada. Our second recommendation concerns our compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Our research shows that as a rule, only a constitutional provision, a children's code or a comprehensive law manages to ensure general principles like participation and best interests of the child are mainstreamed, and that the range of rights in the convention is duly recognized in national law. Where the legal framework is hospitable or even just indifferent to children's rights, the impact of the convention is severely limited. While incorporation remains rare in common-law countries, the parliaments of common-law countries can adopt laws — I know your research has concluded that — and incorporate human rights treaties into national law. The United Kingdom has an example of this in its 1998 Human Rights Act where the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is now enforceable and justiciable in the U.K. because they have implemented such legislation.
This kind of enabling legislation is important in countries like Canada that has an "invisible child'' constitution where our national Constitution makes no significant reference to the rights of children.
In about 30 per cent of countries that have ratified the convention there is reference made and although sometimes it is not very comprehensive, it is seen as a strong move to ensuring that legislation respects the principles of the convention at the very least.
We feel that legislative reform would help ensure that children's rights and the elusive and sporadically applied concepts of evolving capacity, best interests and participation would be addressed comprehensively across our laws and that new or amending legislation would be systematically referenced to the convention and other subsequent treaties.
The experience of state parties in all regions of the world highlights the need for law reform to be linked as well with institutional restructure. Law reform alone is never very "impactful'' and needs the coordination and efforts of governmental and other actors.
That brings us to recommendation three: the children's commissioner as another implementing mechanism. Over the past 17 years, we have seen the growth and flourishing of about 60 independent institutions for children, most of which are visible and popular. I think only two have been formally evaluated at this time. As you know, they all function a little bit differently, but certainly the ones that try to incorporate a good number of the characteristics noted in the general comment on independent institutions tend to be faring quite well in their duties.
One example of an institution for children or children's commission that has worked very well at both the federal and sub-national level, as would mirror the situation here in Canada, can be found in Austria. I know you have looked at New Zealand and other countries as well.
One of the many tasks of the Austria children's commission is to promote publicly a child-friendly society that reflects the ongoing project of creating a culture of children's rights. The commission collaborates with the ombudspersons system in their Länder, which are the equivalent of our provinces, as well as drilling down to the public and private youth welfare institutions.
The commission is also a contact point, not necessarily to address individual complaints, but a contact or referral point. In this system, there is not always a need to make very distinct divisions of whether or not an independent institution will or will not address individual complaints versus systemic complaints. They can act and have a dual role in that regard.
UNICEF Canada believes that an independent children's commission is essential to focus national responsibility and accountability for the implementation of the convention in our federal system, to lend cohesion to national legislation and policy. As you have recognized, to engage civil society and particularly children and to protect their rights from changing political priorities which seem to be changing more rapidly these days in Canada.
We hope to see in the committee's final report some additional emphasis on the capacity for independent institutions to undertake data collection and monitoring and training.
Finally, we wish to emphasize that the functions of a national institution are not designed to replace the responsibilities of the state, not to assume the roles and take them away from the state, but in some cases to collaborate, in some cases to again be independent in their views. That is perhaps the point we would like to emphasize.
Recommendation four is for a federal interdepartmental implementation-working group. We consider this another key implementing mechanism. It is fairly clear, based on the emerging research that coordinating mechanisms are critical to making government work for children. The UN committee has repeatedly urged state parties to better coordinate their efforts. Most of the national mechanisms to coordinate implementation tend to be inter-ministerial commissions or committees, but in Europe many other models prevail.
I just wanted to highlight two, and of course, we can supplement today's presentation with more detailed descriptions of the research. In Germany, at the federal level, the primary responsibility for children's rights lies with the federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. At the state or land level, the provincial level, primary responsibility for childhood policies lies with land authorities. They belong to an association of land authorities and meet on a biannual basis for consultation. The conference of land youth ministers expressly emphasized that they have co-responsibility for implementing the convention and a resolution.
In the Czech Republic, there is a different model and probably one you have not favoured, you have perhaps looked at, but responsibility for coordinating with governmental activities concerning human rights lies in the council, the Council for Human Rights established in 1998. It includes equal numbers of government representatives from different departments, but also civil society. It has NGO and child rights experts represented on it.
Its mandate is defined in terms of national and international standards, monitoring reporting and advice on law reform, and they have a specific committee for children's rights as well. The Czech Republic seems to be treading that fine line between mainstreaming and specializing.
Whatever the model for a federal coordination, we are seeking to elevate the tasks of political and bureaucratic machinery to ensure a more vigorous commitment to measuring, monitoring, reporting, and ultimately cooperating on children's rights.
Different models offer different examples of how jurisdictional barriers are surmountable and become achievable. Effective coordinating mechanisms make children visible ultimately in government action across the board. The UN committee has noted the importance of linking national strategies or plans of action to the work of coordinating committees and adequately resourcing them and ensuring that there is a focal point for responsibility, especially if it is an interdepartmental committee.
Most economically advanced nations have been able to institute a number of implementing mechanisms, not just one, but several. They are mutually supportive and concomitant. The achievement of rights is obviously a gradual and aspirational process. We would like to emphasize our accountability to our children as citizenry, rather than the international community when we talk about the foundations of political accountabilities. I think sometimes in our reporting efforts we tend to feel or in practice be more accountable to the international community than to Canadians. UNICEF will know more about what Canada has said about Canada's children's right than our own populous will.
I would like to share an observation from a forthcoming UNICEF report to be released in about two weeks on child well-being in OECD countries. I know you have heard reference today to different league rankings of Canada and different measures of children's rights or well-being, but this is the first comparative look across six different dimensions of children's rights.
Overall, Canada is ranked in the middle, and it is probably not a coincidence, but the highest-ranking countries generally have several implementing mechanisms for children's rights in place.
This year the convention turns 18, and along with it, the first generation of children to be born with child rights under the convention. Is there any better time for our legislature and our courts and our executive to commit to that cohort and the one that comes behind it, that their rights will be better protected and that children's rights will been a visible reference in our society.
Chris Derksen-Hiebert, Interim Director for Advocacy and Education, World Vision — Canada: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. World Vision appreciates the chance to respond to your interim report, Who's In Charge Here? and to speak to your recommendations regarding actions that the federal government can take to ensure greater compliance with the convention.
I want to acknowledge the fine contribution of the child rights working group, a student-led initiative of the international human rights program at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. A number of representatives are here with us today. Their research efforts deepened the value of this initiative, as you can see in the documents that we have presented to you. I also want to acknowledge the stellar work of my colleague, Sarah Austin, who was unfortunately taken ill a few days ago. She should be here to present this with all the depth that she has, but is unable to for that reason. In that regard, if it is appropriate at times, if there are questions that I cannot answer, if it is your pleasure, some of my colleagues will respond to questions. I want to express thanks to Victoria Lam, who supported Sarah's work at World Vision.
The committee's report clearly reveals that while Canada has taken important steps towards the realization of children's rights, there are several specific actions that the government must take in order to fulfil its duties under the convention.
As a Christian child focused humanitarian organization, World Vision is committed to promoting the implementation and enforcement of the convention. Here in Canada we are dedicated to holding our government accountable to the commitments it has made to children here at home and around the world. Through our work in some 100 countries, we have seen the tremendous changes that take place in the lives of children when governments, NGOs, the private sector and others truly seek to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of children.
Building on what the committee learned through its initial consultations and the recommendations from your interim report, World Vision partnered with the child rights working group in order to research what else can be done to strengthen Canada's accountability to the convention. Through our research, we sought to assess the measures taken by other states parties, regarding incorporating the CRC into domestic law. We also examined the efforts of various other states parties, as well as provincial governments within Canada to establish children's commissioners or ombudspersons through legislation.
Our research findings are summarized in our second submission and a companion paper which all of you have received. We have also prepared a chart, which one of my colleagues will hold up for us. A copy of the chart is contained in the package that you received today. Our submission summarizes the examples of provincial and national legislation for children's commissioners. It helps to compare and contrast the various approaches. I encourage you to have a look at it, as you are able and ask questions as part of our discussion today.
Taking into consideration Canada's federal nature and practice toward international treaties and learning from the experience of South Africa, Sweden, Norway, Argentina, New Zealand, England, Scotland and Austria, World Vision has five brief recommendations that we wish to bring to your attention today. The first recommendation is that Canada should adopt enabling legislation that will bind the federal government to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. World Vision's research regarding the approaches of other states, such as Argentina, South Africa and Norway, clearly indicates that the jurisdictional hurdles of incorporating the convention into national legislation can be overcome.
Our second recommendation is that Canada should establish a permanent body that would engage in a comprehensive review of legislation and related administrative guidelines and policies on an ongoing basis to ensure compliance with the convention. Although Canada conducted a review of the legislation prior to ratifying the convention, it did not establish a process of ongoing review.
Testimony of many witnesses to your committee has clearly established that there are numerous examples of federal laws that do not conform to the standards of the convention. World Vision's examination of the efforts of states such as South Africa and Sweden clearly indicate that a permanent body should be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that domestic legislation either complies with or exceeds the provisions of convention, both on an article-by-article basis as well as holistically.
Thirdly, our recommendation is that Canada should enhance the role of Parliament to strengthen the federal government's accountability to the convention. It is our view that transparency and accountability are essential to creating an atmosphere of legislative change and ensures the enforcement of children's rights. Enhancing the role of Parliament and engaging in discussion with the provinces and territories can help achieve this end. Parliament has the capacity to influence the decisions and actions of the government, but it also connects with communities to influence opinions and actions and raise much needed awareness on issues concerning the rights of children.
Our fourth recommendation is that Canada should enact legislation to establish an independent children's commission. World Vision strongly supports the Senate committee's recommendation in this regard and endorses the various principles outlined in your report, such as a need to establish the commission through legislation, to have independence for the government, and to ensure the participation of children. However, based on our review of other national commissions in Austria, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, England, Scotland and Argentina, as well as the nine provincial children's commissions here in Canada, we strongly recommend that the following elements be added to the mandate of the federal commission for children.
We recommend pluralistic representation through a multidisciplinary team of staff. For example, people with a focus on Aboriginal children's rights, refugee and immigrant's right, people from a social work, legal and health work background. We recommend accessibility and confidentiality, ensuring that they are both geographically and physically accessible and they protect the privacy and confidentiality of children. The third element is a complaint resolution process whereby the commissioner would accept and consider complaints within their federal jurisdiction. We recommend a right of refusal and referral mechanism in order to ensure that the complaint system is not unduly burdened with complaints where they are beyond their jurisdiction or where there are insufficient grounds to support the complaint. We suggest the commission have a duty to report to Parliament and to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in order to ensure greater accountability to children and all other citizens. We recommend that the CRC should be entrenched within Canada's foreign policy and international systems framework. World Vision supports the recommendations made by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, calling for the CRC to be the framework for all official development assistance, our rights based approach to ODA, and to identify on an annual basis the amount and proportion of ODA that is earmarked for the implementation of the CRC.
World Vision also recommends that Canada assert its commitment to children's rights through its role with the UN Human Rights Council, and that it supports the development of an international complaints procedure for violations of the CRC.
In conclusion World Vision wishes to reaffirm our strong support for your committee's interim report and recommendations. Moreover, we hope that our research will be of assistance in helping to strengthen and build upon the calls for enabling legislation for the CRC and a national children's commission. Indeed, our research has demonstrated that the challenge of a federal system is not a valid excuse for Canada to continue to shy away from its obligations under international law.
The Government of Canada has a duty to take real and effective steps towards fulfilling its obligations to children. While Canada may not be able to implement all the legislative measures available, it can take some important steps forward that would have a positive and lasting impact on the lives of children.
The legislative experiences and challenges of the various states and parties that we examined should serve as an inspiration for this change. We commend your committee for the important work you have achieved thus far and eagerly await the release of your final report. More importantly, we look forward to supporting the government to take deliberate action toward the full realization of children's rights, both here at home and abroad.
Senator Munson: Thank you for the three reports. The report from Campaign 2000 is simple and strong and gave me a great deal of additional information on the issue of child rights.
I am reluctant to get into the political argument because children are beyond the boundaries of politics. There should be one program for all children. I have been listening to today's witnesses with great care. I have read the Campaign 2000 report and listened to evidence on childhood agreements signed by the Government of Canada, and the Liberal government. I have heard you speak of the historic agreement in Kelowna. As Ms. Wolff remarked, we rely on the "unpredictable goodwill of parliamentarians.'' With a change of government can come a change is how we treat our children. I am not here to criticize governments, because I once was a consultant with the Liberal government. I worked for about four months with Mr. Nault on First Nations issues. That was supposed to be the greatest thing that ever happened, but then it changed and Mr. Barton came and now it is Kelowna.
How do the organizations adjust to the political changes? Do you have to start all over again each time the government changes? If the Government of Canada is listening to what you say on your front page here today, how can you work with this government?
I ask that in light of the back page of your report where you discuss the U.K. and the targets they set in 1999. Prime Minister Tony Blair's government will be gone soon enough and what happens then? You people must find this very frustrating.
Ms. Rothman: It is frustrating and performing non-direct service work is not every funder's favourite and makes survival difficult. In addition to this annual report card, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and as of next year Alberta are doing provincial report cards. Provinces play quite a significant role in the policies and programs.
In 2000, we hoped the government would make a recommitment, but it did not happen. The issue of change of governments is a very difficult one and may be the argument for an enshrined commissioner's position that is independent of small G or big G governments.
I have seen tremendous change in Toronto over the last 30 years. Toronto is both an economic engine and a source of increasing disparity. I think we take our cues, try to learn, and try to support public opinion on why it is important to do things from the rights perspective, the economic perspective and equality perspective.
Senator Munson: On a more positive note, you say the U.K. government is on track to meet its poverty reduction goals that began in 1999. Can you give us some specifics of the U.K. government being on track? There may be lessons learned for governments in Canada.
Ms. Rothman: There definitely are, I would suggest, lessons to be learned and to be very fair, one of the U.K. NGO leaders said to me, to be really fair you have to remind people that where we started in 1999 was probably at a lower point than where Canada was at that time.
I want to acknowledge we have made some important, small steps of progress with regard to the national child benefit and some important initiatives for Aboriginal communities on reserve and off reserve. It is almost as if the results you get are relative to the inputs of all kinds, both human resources, financial resources, if you will leadership resources.
Tony Blair said, we are going to end child poverty by 2020, and by 2010, it will be down 50 per cent and by 2004, it will be down 25 per cent. I will not go on in great detail. They have three measures. They look at a poverty measure that the European Union has adopted, which is 60 per cent of median income. They also look at the depth of poverty. They track one measure.
What have they done? They raised the minimum wage. They invested more broadly in housing, and I suggest that if we look closely, the U.K. already was investing in housing, but they differentiated the ways in which they were using those public resources. They initiated more early learning and care situations and they increased their equivalent of the child benefit, the income transfer for children. There are other things as well, but I think those are the main things.
Senator Poy: We are not doing as well as the British government, am I right?
Ms. Rothman: It appears that way. I say that because I have not had an opportunity to read every single detail of what is happening there, but their numbers are moving while our numbers remain the same.
Senator Poy: If you were the leader of the government, tell me what you would do to make it better here in Canada.
Ms. Rothman: First, I would start talking about it. We do not have a leader. The word "poverty'' barely crossed the radar screen in the last federal election and not very much since then either, from any of the parties.
It is an economic issue and it will have an impact on our future labour force. I am sure you have heard these things many times before. What would we do? I would say, how about strike a multi-party commission. I do not want to say a royal commission because I do not think we need that, but you do need a cheerleading section and you need many people saying, yes, Canada can, should, and will have a poverty reduction strategy. I would set some targets and timetables. Previous governments did it on deficit and debt reduction and made some important progress. I think a similar approach could be taken. We have outlined a number of things that need to be considered.
I would say set some targets and timetables, stick to them, and establish an independent children's commissioner who would act as an important monitor overriding individual governments.
I would like to see something in the next budget that would kick it off a bit. We also need our leaders to be talking about the issue.
Mr. Derksen-Hiebert: I think the role of Parliament is very important because it stands, in a sense, in the middle of popular participation and the executive level agreements.
As you all know, the decisions on signing treaties are taken at the executive level and do not involve Parliament. That is one of the flaws in the system. Parliament is not engaged as fully as it should be and does not implement this convention in Canadian context. Perhaps we should look to ways to evolve Parliament in terms of annual discussions involving child poverty issues. Perhaps we should look to the implementation of the convention in Canada within Parliament. We believe that a commission is vital to these suggestions as well as the need for strong leadership from the Prime Minister.
I believe the U.K. has been successful because of the involvement of the Prime Minister; Tony Blair has taken this as an important issue of his own.
Ms. Wolff: The very premise of rights is that they are not subject to whims of charity or available resources or changing policies. The more we can have implementing structures that survive government change and allow Parliaments to reflect on specific programmatic issues the better our human rights will be. Of course, we will always have some evolution and we will have to respond to different Parliament's needs, but the establishment of some sort of supra-parliamentary structure will help us maintain the necessary stability in the field of human rights. That structure would eliminate the dance that we do with different political parties. We had a governmental plan of action for children; it was not party oriented. Can we not accept that and move on with it?
Perhaps we could look what other countries do well and how we can maybe aspire to some those things. The forthcoming study I referred to that will be released in two weeks looking at child rights indicators across the OECD countries shows that no one country does very well in everything.
Canada does well in educational achievement and in certain aspects of material deprivation or non-deprivation. The study shows us is that children are not really part of the landscape. What we see in terms of material deprivation is that more Canadians than most other countries have cars and children have their own bedrooms to sleep in. However, we have far fewer children's books in the home than other countries. We have far fewer children's calculators, rulers, and other instruments to conduct school work.
We do better in educational attainment than we do in children's risk-taking behaviours. We are at the bottom of the table when it comes to the time parents spend talking to their children.
We see educational attainment and having cars and big houses is important to adults, but where are children's issues? I think it is illustrative of not having those implementing mechanisms in place that create a visible reference in our society that say children have rights regardless of all these needs and desire of adults, whether in Parliament or in families.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Ms. Rothman, partly because the government seems to have an agenda around seniors with the new minister and so on, and the success of Stephen Lewis and his grannies, is there any way you could link your issue to that. That is not really a question; it is just an idea that went through my head.
Ms. Rothman: Good idea. We do have seniors in our coalition.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I am happy to support the recommendation of a commissioner for children, but it is of great concern to me because I look at the Privacy Commissioner, the Ethics Commissioner, Status of Women Canada, and in essence, I see that nobody cares and not much happens.
How would you make this commissioner stronger, better, deeper, more resourceful than any other commissioner?
Ms. Rothman: I am not an expert on commissioners or structure, but I do know that the Office of the Auditor General certainly has an impact. I am not familiar with the technical side of roles and responsibilities.
I suggest that there is something to be learned from the provincial level children's advocates' office. Does it have to do with the structure or does it have to do with the content and the way the message is sent? I am not sure of the answer.
Senator Nancy Ruth: That is a good question. Housing and income have been issues for the Status of Women since 1975 and the royal commission; women still have the same issues.
Ms. Rothman: We no longer have a commissioner.
Senator Nancy Ruth: It is also not a specialized audit of the Auditor General, which it could be. The environment has a specialized auditor.
Ms. Rothman: Yes, perhaps we should look at that model.
Mr. Derksen-Hiebert: We talked about enabling legislation that would bind Canada to the convention. This is a bit of a brainstorm, I suppose, but does that provide more force than some of the other examples that you have given us?
We have a convention with some level of specificity that the government would be bound to if there was enabling legislation. That in combination with the commissioner, in combination with a body in Parliament, could provide some more heft to this commitment than some of the other examples you have given.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Would your law students, without a court challenge, attack the legislation in the Supreme Court? That is where that would go, right? You would continue to push the government with the courts. Is that what might flow or what you were thinking of? That is where my mind went.
Mr. Derksen-Hiebert: We talked about three different levels. There is the legislation itself that would bind the country to the convention. There is the need for some sort of permanent body that reviews the compliance of legislation to the CRC. Then there is the commission that would have its own responsibilities.
Ms. Pearson: I commend the theme, the state of the word's children, because it is called the double dividend, it is women and children. It is called the double dividend; it has some very good analyses in it.
We are talking about the voice for children, but I am always interested in the voice of children. What would you add to the recommendations that you have already made to ensure that children themselves are active participants in your endeavours?
Ms. Wolff: I am not sure if further detail is required. I know that in looking at your recommendation around an independent institution you have been clear that children's participation needs to be a part of that.
In many countries, there are independent institutions in terms of children's councils, consultations through websites, and so on. I think very visible children's participation is a hallmark of independent institutions these days.
Senator Pearson: The models that you have been describing do not actually incorporate the children and I want to have it emphasized in terms of the testimony.
No mechanism will work properly without the capacity to engage the children.
Ms. Wolff: A good example is the consultation on the UN Study on Violence Against Children where the independent expert conducting the global study made an effort to advocate for regional consultation. The Government of Canada the regional consultation and we consulted approximately 300 children who spoke to us about their perspectives on violence. It was the first global UN-based study that consulted children to that extent.
The children's comments differed from the comments of the so-called experts, adult experts in the mainstream literature. We are used to focusing on peer and gang violence in Canada. The children made it clear that violence in the home and bullying, and not street violence, are their major concerns. These two forms of violence affect them on a day- to-day basis, and affect their physical and mental well-being. The bullying form was not physical bullying, but emotional and exclusionary bullying, relational bullying by adults and peers. In fact, what bothered them most about bullying was not that they resented the bully, the peer that perpetrated that violence; they resented the adult response to bullying. They resented that parents and teachers did not intervene; they sidelined the issue and left the children to deal with it as an inevitable part of growing up. When we listen to the children, we learn different things and our policy is different because of their comments.
Senator Munson: I am sure there are children in Ontario going to bed hungry tonight. In comparison to 1989, how many children in this province live in poverty?
Ms. Rothman: I do not know if I have my Ontario statistics in front of me, but I can get the Ontario numbers for you.
Senator Munson: I would just like to have it on the record. We keep seeing the ratio of one in six live in poverty. In terms of public awareness, people can understand that children are waking up in the morning without a breakfast program and going to bed hungry at night. There are single moms working for minimum wage. However, it is difficult to sensitize the public to these very issues.
Ms. Rothman: I have the numbers for Canada.
Senator Nancy Ruth: To what extent is the poverty in cities or the rural setting?
Ms. Rothman: That question is more difficult to answer. The Senate report on rural poverty was quite well done. We know that 80 per cent of our population lives in cities. In Toronto, one out of three children under 14 years of age lives in poverty.
Senator Nancy Ruth: One in three in Toronto?
Ms. Rothman: Yes, one in three children lives in poverty in the new City of Toronto, not the GTA. It is slightly less in the GTA, and I can get you the statistics for Ontario if that would be helpful.
Senator Munson: I am interested in those numbers. I watched with interest the ABC report on Camden, New Jersey. It is hard to believe that type of poverty exists in our backyard. I am sure we have similar levels of poverty in different parts of Canada's largest city.
Ms. Rothman: You may be familiar with the reports of the United Way and Toronto City Summit Alliance looking at neighbourhoods that are particularly dense in terms of poverty and lack of services.
Ms. Pearson, I would certainly support a role for youth in the whole approach. In the last two years, many young people have approached us and asked to work with us. We have a youth action committee. We need dedicated resources to keep it up and to be fair and inclusive.
The Chairman: Is there anything you wish to add?
Mr. Derksen-Hiebert: We can confirm that statement. We built child participation into our recommendation. It should statutorily mandated in the commission's office in Canada. It is, as you reflected, it is a different kind of discipline. It is a challenge to make it meaningful, to make the children's participation meaningful. It is something that we attempt to do in our international work is to involve children around issues of violence in particular.
We can look to other countries to examples of good practice in this regard. Other forums elicit the views of children that are so important to the protection of their rights.
The Chairman: I think we have run out of time. I want to thank Mr. Derksen-Hiebert, Ms. Rothman and Ms. Wolff for coming.
I have been a chair of a family service association and I am well aware of the commitment of the staff and the volunteers of all of your organizations. When we were talking about continuity and consistency, I think you brought the attention of children to parliamentarians in a non-partisan way. The continuity of your organizations is something that should be noted in our report. It may offer some suggestions as to how the government should word it.
I thank you, each and every one of you for coming.
Senators, next we have from Metro Action Committee, METRAC, Ms. Sudabeh Mashkuri, Vice-President of the Board; from the YWCA, Metro Toronto, Ms. Corrine Rusch-Drutz, Director of Advocacy and Communication; and Ms. Martha Friendly, Childcare Resource and Research Unit, University of Toronto.
Corinne Rusch-Drutz, Director, Advocacy and Communication, YWCA Metro Toronto: First of all, senators, thank you very much for the opportunity to express the views of YWCA Toronto. We are, as many of you may well know, the largest multiservice organization by, for and about women and girls in the greater Toronto area.
We would like to acknowledge the committee's work in recognizing a rights-based approach to children's human rights, particularly an approach that focuses on children as active agents in society, with their own set of individualized needs.
As direct service providers to children, many of whom are victims of abuse and violence in the home and are witnesses to women abuse, we have identified a gap between the federal government's understanding of the theory that children are not just the future, but are citizens today. The government's understanding affects the way it supports, provides and protects Canadian children.
We would like to recognize and point out that we think the federal government could make the connection between children's rights and the rights of their caregivers and their providers, most of whom are women.
One of our purposes here today is to speak holistically to the issues of children and their child care providers and to see the connections between the rights of women and the rights of children and how interlaced they are. From our perspective, it is almost impossible to divide the two issues because we see them directly related in relation to our service provision on the ground.
Our position is that we are the single largest provider of shelter for women and the second largest national provider of child care. We can speak to this absolute interconnection between the two issues because they are really the underpinning of the services that we provide. We ensure that women have the right and the ability to escape violence, but once they have escaped violence, it is equally important to rebuild a healthy life and to have the means and provisions with which to do that rebuilding. We offer housing options, employment and skills development, as well as extended social services for women and children across the GTA.
In our national study Effective Practises in Sheltering Women: Leaving Violence in Intimate Relationships, we indicate that the federal government must accelerate its efforts to provide adequate levels of funding for shelters, particularly for women and children, many of whom, we wish to point out, are escaping immediate and lethal violence. This means if they do not leave, they will be killed.
We recommend that the federal, provincial and territorial governments answer concerns raised by the United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women by sufficiently funding post-shelter services for abused women and their children to address their safety needs after they return to the community. This service extends to women and children after staying in the shelter; we must have programs that allow them to reintegrate into the community. These services would include, but are not necessarily limited to, follow up services, reintegration programs and outreach.
It is essential to have improved access to safe and affordable permanent housing to assist women and their children to leave an abusive relationship before actually needing to seek the safety of a shelter. The women need to leave the shelters with the appropriate to make the transition to a violence-free life for their children. The women need a protected and safe home.
Canada is one of the few countries without an affordable housing strategy, with one in every six children living in poverty in this country; for First Nations communities that child poverty rate is even higher, with one in four children living in poverty.
We see lack of affordable and permanent housing as a factor that can often result in the placement of children with the Children's Aid Society or a delay in their return home, and from their own statistics, they report that costs the agency about $18 million a year.
In our study, Building Community Architecture for Early Childhood, we draw the links between abuse and the factors that prevent women from leaving their abusive partners. In the study, we argue that access to affordable high-quality child care will provide women with increased options when they consider leaving an abusive partner. It allows them to increase their ability to establish and independent and violence-free household by giving them the ability to access and earn a sustainable income.
Canada's expenditures on child care as a percentage of the GDP are the lowest among OECD countries. As it now stands, regulated child care spaces meet the needs of less than 16 per cent of Canadian children, and with the cancellation of the federal child care arrangement, we see that there is little possibility or prospect for improvement.
The introduction of the federal universal child care benefit in 2006, with the aim of providing all families with $100 per child per month under the age of six has been detrimental to child care provisions in this country. While the attempt to give parents a choice in the child care options that best suit their individual needs is a laudable idea, in practice, it has resulted in a nationwide shortage of licensed and affordable quality child care, with almost the total collapse of government-funded child care provisions in rural and remote communities. In cancelling this child care agreement with the provinces, the federal government took $3.6 billion away from Canadian communities. This funding was clearly earmarked to expand early learning and child care options for over 100,000 families. It was also earmarked to access low-income and rural families and children with special needs. It was earmarked to enhance intervention services for children at risk. Many of these children from an Ontario perspective, particularly in the GTA have been identified in the 13 high priority areas by both the city and by the United Way. Aboriginal children were the hardest hit.
It is our position that universal quality affordable child care in a non-profit regulated setting is every child's right. The enshrinement of this right in legislation will give every child, regardless of means, geographic location and background can access to the fundamental building blocks that are provided in an early childhood learning care system. We recognize a publicly funded universal child care program as an entitlement of all Canadian children. We cannot over-emphasize the importance of the interconnectedness between Canada's legislation on children's rights and women's rights.
We urge the government to take a holistic view on the complexities of these issues and to see the linkage between violence against women and children, poverty, affordable housing and universal child care. Recognizing this correlation, we recommend that the federal, provincial and territorial governments take immediate steps to increase services and protection for women and children escaping violence and offer them reintegration programs following their shelter stays. We recommend that they develop a permanent and affordable housing strategy for women and children and establish a sustainable government funded universal child care system.
In the committee's suggestions for reforms, it recommends that the federal government develop a more effective means of incorporating and implementing services and funding for programs that affect children and children's rights. It also recommends that the federal government work with non-governmental organizations to develop these mechanisms, and the funding necessary to foster an effective and functional cohesive voluntary sector for the protection of children's rights. We would like to be part of that development.
YWCA is the largest national provider of health for women and girls and we are the second largest provider of child care. This means that we offer regulated services to over 10,000 children annually in 4,550 licensed child care spaces, and that translates into some 1.5 million hours of care every year.
That is supplemented by our camps and our after school programs, which host more than 20,000 children annually. We offer support to families through parenting programs, education, and support services on the ground. We would be happy to work with the federal government on developing the policies, procedures and best practises necessary to implement this vision. Thank you.
Martha Friendly, Childcare Resource and Research Unit, University of Toronto: Honourable senators, thank you very much for inviting me here today. In following this, I am thinking about what I do not need to say.
I am a policy researcher and I have been working at the University of Toronto on early learning and child care for 30 years. My presentation is based on two pieces of work. You have before you a chapter in a forthcoming book and a summary of some work that the OECD has been doing.
I began writing this paper in 1990, before Senator Pearson became a senator and when she was the President of the Canadian Council on Children and Youth. This was the last presidential consultation that was held and it was on just as the convention was being implemented.
I started with that because I presented the paper on child care at that meeting. My conclusion, in this paper, is that since 1990, we have not taken seriously the question of children's rights in early living and child care.
There is about the same level of participation, the same level of accessibility to regulated child care and other early childhood education programs such as kindergarten as there was when the convention was signed in 1990. Affordability is about the same. It remains an enormous problem for low-income single mothers, modest-income families and middle-income families. I think the thing that has really changed since then is that we have begun to think about early learning and child care as they do in other countries where it is a consolidated program, where it is early learning and child care. So that it is a program aimed at children.
This idea is very much embodied in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and I will discuss some of the articles that pertain to early learning and child care.
I will not bore you again with the OECD table that shows that Canada is the lowest spender in this group. I want to point out as part of the context that Canada is actually one of the lowest spenders on benefits and services for families and young children in the OECD. Another table shows that the only countries that are lower in this spending are Mexico, the United States and Korea. It is not that we are spending in areas other than child care, but that we are very poor spenders on families and children overall. I think that is important to note.
If you look at this document, you will see how we fare on things like maternity and parental leave. You will also see that we have one of the highest GDPs per capital in the OECD, so it is not that we are lacking in funds. There is a real contrast on how countries spend and how much wealth we have.
You might want to reflect on the history, as I do in this document, of the progression of the child care since 1990. I am sure you know it has been on and off the national agenda many times. There has been a similar situation at the provincial level, and this is a problem. The provinces, like the federal governments change policies as new leaderships begin their tenure. New leaders begin expansion, then another new government, as in the case of Ontario, cuts all of the funding, and all of the day care facilities are closed. A similar situation occurred in British Columbia in the last couple of years. We have had the same situation in Quebec.
I think what you can see that this yo-yo situation has become so unmanageable that we have not been able to get a handle on it. That is the reason that many of us who work in this area insist that there needs to be a national policy.
It is important to look at the convention in detail to see where we are not in compliance. Three articles are closely related to early learning and child care. The first important article is article 18, which specifically talks about child care. It identifies child care and assigns the responsibility for rendering appropriate assistance to parents and ensuring that children of working parents have the right to benefits.
It is important to note that it is the "states parties'' that are responsible, not the parents, the provinces, the municipalities and not voluntary organizations. Canada is the state party.
Article 4 is one of the most important articles of the convention not only for child care but overall. It specifies how the national government, the state party, should fulfill its responsibility for ensuring that commitment to children's rights is met. It applies to all of the convention, it is the overarching convention, and it is the concept of first call. In ratifying the convention, Canada has signed on to a pledge that we will harmonize national law with the convention's principles. Our signature means we expect to assume responsibility for institutionalizing appropriate legislative and administrative mechanisms to ensure compliance.
That is a fairly serious pledge. Drawing your attention to the cancellation of the child care program, I am sure that was not considered when the cancellation was effected. We do not comply with article 18.
Article 4 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child deals with the facilities that are available for children. I would really like to raise the question of the quality the child care that we have in Canada. It is underfunded, underfinanced, and the people who are working in it, who are all women, are extremely poorly paid. I think article 3 speaks to that. The facilities that are available for children are not adequate; they are not in the best interests of the child.
I would say there are about five other articles of the convention that are specifically relevant to early learning and child care. One article refers to the rights of a mentally or physically disabled child, which discusses the concept of inclusion of early learning in child care. Article 24, covers the right to access to healthcare and prevention and includes the concept of early learning and child care and the social determinates of health. Article 27 covers the right to an adequate standard of living. Of course, this has to do with mothers in the labour force and the ability of the families to learn a living. Article 28 states the right to education. On this article, I would like to point out that the United Nations also has education for all, which is specifically about education and carries on the work of the convention. This United Nations agreement actually establishes early childhood education as the first tier of education. The last global monitoring report, which is this fall, shows that Canada was not even on the horizon in terms of education for all.
To conclude, we have never had a sustained, consistent approach to the public policy needed to establish an early learning and child care system that would even aspire to comply with this convention.
Neither the provinces and territories, nor the federal government, the state party, have actually lived up to Canada's commitment. Just in writing this chapter for a book, I was asked to answer the question with regard to early learning and child care since the convention was ratified: What do developments in Canada reveal about the level of government commitment to the rights of the child?
The editors of the book, Brian Howe and Katherine Covell, who are experts on children's rights, have a really great kind of scheme of four levels of commitment to compliance with the convention. Using this scheme, I actually concluded that in early learning and child care we fall between level 1, which is merely symbolic, and level 2, which comes in spurts of un-sustained action. If any of the progress that has occurred has been motivated by consideration of the convention, it is not apparent. It does not come up. We do not hear about it at all.
I conclude that the issue of early learning and child care as a children's right has not been addressed seriously and that the convention has played a small role, if any, in government's consideration of this area.
Sudabeh Mashkuri, Vice-President of the Board, METRAC, (Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children): For those of you who do not know about METRAC, Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children is a not-for-profit community based organization dedicated to rights of all women and children to live their lives free of violence and the threat of violence.
METRAC's programs seek to prevent all violence against women. METRAC operates three programs, community outreach and education, community safety and community justice. We have a brief that discusses in more detail some of METRAC's important work.
I have been listening to the other speakers and I will not repeat what they have said. I will focus my attention and highlight four areas where Canada has fallen short of implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We discuss four areas in our brief. We first discuss violence and the impact of intimate violence on children and the resulting violence against children. We discuss child poverty, which the last speakers spoke of quite eloquently. We discuss treatment and protection of children in the context of immigration and refugee law, and the gendered nature of violence and its impact on the lives of girls.
When issues of violence against children come up, there is not much of a gender-based analysis at that time. Children are all lumped together. We believe that violence affects boys and girls differently.
In the first part of our presentation, we discuss violence and the impact of family violence on children and the resulting violence against children. We have put forward some statistics about violence against children. These statistics highlight that girls generally experience higher rates of family violence than boys do, girls were four times more likely to be sexually mistreated, and that girls are the victims in eight out of 10 family-related sexual assaults committed against youth and children.
We also highlight some of the new laws in Ontario that take into account violence against children with regards to family law. In Ontario, an amendment to the Children's Law Reform Act requires family courts to consider family violence that may have occurred at any point during an intimate relationship and that was directed toward the spouse or any other member of the household. This bears on the ability of a person to act as a parent when making an application for custody or access. Women's groups have been working towards this amendment for many years.
Furthermore, in September 2006, Bill 89, known as "Kevin and Jared's Law,'' was passed by Ontario legislature. The legislation has not been given Royal Assent. This bill amends the Ontario Child and Family Services Act to include mandatory supervised access to any parent who is convicted of child or domestic abuse within the family home. This is in response to two children that were killed while they were visiting with their fathers, fathers who had been previously convicted of abusing their partners.
These new laws must be implemented and taken into account, to bring Canada on line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Our provinces must comply with the convention.
I will not go over the child poverty section of our paper but I would like to highlight the Campaign 2000 report card that we have seen here today. There are close to 1.2 million Canadian children, one child out of six, living in poverty. I point out that First Nation children are impacted even more by extreme poverty.
Included in our submission are the statistics on social assistance in Ontario. The numbers include the figures compiled through to November 2006 and show that a single parent with one child receives $470 per month for basic needs, and a maximum shelter allowance of $538. One thousand dollars per month is far below the poverty level especially here in Toronto. We do not have a consistent national strategy or plan to combat child poverty.
METRAC regrets that the principles of non-discrimination, of the best interests of the child and of the respect for the views of the child, have not always been given adequate weight by administrative bodies dealing with the situation of refugee or immigrant children.
I am a lawyer and I deal with women and children who are immigrants and refugees. I have found that family reunification for many children who have either left their parents back home and have come alone, or for those whose parents who are here and their children are back home, is too lengthy. Our immigration policy does not make reunification an easy process. Another example is the lack of rights of convention refugee children to include their parents overseas in their permanent resident applications. A person must be over the age of 19 years before including family members on the application.
There are issues of deportation of Canadian-born children with their parents who do not have status. Although the Supreme Court of Canada we must consider the best interests of the child, the way that has been interpreted by immigration is that that is only one factor among many other factors when they are put forward in front of an immigration officer.
There is also the issue of detention of children in immigration holding cells. Although the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act states that children may be detained in immigration detention centres only as the last resort, there are cases of children being detained with their parents or alone. I have had many clients who have been detention with their children, newborn children as well as children under the age of 16 years.
Last, I think it is important to talk about the gendered nature of violence and its impact on the lives of girls. As you know, Canada was a signatory to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the 1990s. In examining Canada's implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, you should also examine the lack of gender-based analysis as promised in the Beijing declaration.
Many of the programs and policies attempting to address the issues facing children collapse the needs of girls into the category of youth and children. For example, school-based violence prevention programs are becoming more generic. The recognition that much of the violence directed at girls and women is gender-based and the result of patriarchal powers, is now being eroded and substituted by growing emphasis on Safe School Acts and the bullying in the schoolyards and the whole girl gang violence, suggesting that girls are just as violent as boys. However, such a review seems to obscure not only the differences between girls, but also masks the reality that girls are the subject of sexual violence. It should be noted that girls who face barriers due to their race, sexual orientation, ability and class would face further obstacles than a girl child who is seen through the policies developed for children in the dominant society. We have gone through some examples of girl children who have disabilities, for example, or Aboriginal girl children and how violence affects them.
METRAC would like to say that in light of the information that we have put forward in our brief, there is a clear need for the federal, provincial and territorial governments to monitor compliance and work towards an alignment of Canada's international obligation with domestic legislation and policies to protect rights of children and girl children specifically.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I have a number of questions, most of them for the YWCA. How many billions of dollars would a publicly funded universal child care program cost? You said the YWCA was the second largest provider of child care, and you provide 10,000 spaces, which is like nothing given the population of kids. But who is the largest provider?
Ms. Rusch-Drutz: That other organization with an M, the YMCA.
Senator Nancy Ruth: You talked about the collapse of child care in rural communities because of funding cuts. My understanding is the cuts have not happened yet; they are about to happen. Please help me to understand why you made those statements.
For the people from METRAC, I loved your presentation. I want to know what part race plays in family violence. I do not know how to ask the question, but does one put a racial lens on that issue?
Ms. Mashkuri: As far as violence within family and whether race plays a part, I think violence happens within all families, no matter your race or culture or where you are from.
Senator Nancy Ruth: It sure happened in mine.
Ms. Mashkuri: I think the impact on those people who are involved in family violence and race is an issue is within the systems, and specifically within the criminal justice system or the family law system, the immigration system.
I will give you an example. If you are a person who is from a racialized community and you are being abused in your family and you do not have status in Canada, you do not have the same rights. You cannot call the police because the police can report you to Immigration Canada. Your rights are being eroded in that way, and that is through the lens of race and ethnicity. The issue is that there is racism in the system as far as family law issues go as well.
I know YWCA and METRAC have worked together on arbitration coalition and looked at it through the lens of anti-racism, anti-oppression work. I think there is an effect, but in the way that violence is handled within the criminal and family justice system as well as the immigration system.
Ms. Rusch-Drutz: We have certainly seen that in relation to women and children coming to our shelter system. Many women, particularly immigrant women come, and many women who do not necessarily have full access to the language are told by their abusive partners if they actually seek help and try to access shelter or any form of service provision for them, that they will be sent back.
Without actual access to information, they are terrified and they refuse to come. There is a gap in terms of what is available to them because they do not actually know.
The Chairman: That is where I want to intervene. Anyone on Canadian soil can call the police, and a crime is a crime.
Ms. Rusch-Drutz: Yes, but it is a question of knowing your rights.
The Chairman: I think you left the impression that they are prohibited from calling. The point is that they would not call because of the fear of the immigration system sending them back to their country of origin.
Ms. Mashkuri: Yes, you are quite right that no person is prohibited; everybody has the same right. It is a question of how those rights are implemented.
The Chairman: Exactly.
Ms. Mashkuri: I have had clients who called the police and they have been put in detention because they do not have immigration status. The issue if whether their rights are being implemented across the board.
Ms. Friendly: The cost of a universal national early learning and child care system for children zero to six is in the neighbourhood of $10 billion or $11 billion a year. That is the estimated cost of a full system, which would have to be ramped up over some period of years. That program would contain some general assumptions that include the fact that most parents would take maternity and parental leave for a year. It would be based on mother's participation as it is now, but it also would assume that all children should have access to an early learning and child care program by the time they are two and a half or three years of age, as they do in most other countries. This is something that is common place in Western Europe, no matter what the mother is doing. It is early learning and child care. It also would take into account that there would be a parent fee that would be on a geared to income basis that would total 20 per cent of the total budget. In Sweden the calculation for the parent fee part is around 18 per cent at this point, so it would not be the same — it would not necessarily be a Quebec style system where every parent pays the same low price. You could do this in different ways.
Is that a full enough answer? The cost would be in that realm. The European Union child care network recommended that countries spend at least 1 per cent of GDP on children in that age group. A number of the countries in Europe spend double that amount. You could talk about the financing of early learning and child care until the cows come home, but that is the best I can answer it, if that helps.
Senator Poy: I want to thank you all for your presentations. I have a number of questions and I will follow up with Senator Nancy Ruth regarding the percentage of what the government puts into early learning and child care.
Canada is one of the lowest, as it has been mentioned a number of times contributes 0.25; am I correct?
Ms. Friendly: Yes.
Senator Poy: Is that federal funding?
Ms. Friendly: No, it is actually all funding, all public funding. It includes funding for kindergarten, which is all provincial.
Senator Poy: You mentioned during your presentation that this should be a federal responsibility because it would work a lot better. Since children are children, they are Canadians, and it should be taken care of by the federal government. Can you think of how the federal government can negotiate with the provinces to take that out of the provincial hands?
Ms. Friendly: I just wrote a chapter on federalism and child care. It is clearly a provincial responsibility. That does not mean that the federal government should not have a leadership and a policy-setting role like it has with healthcare.
If you contrast health and education, they are different, but of course, public education is really different because it began developing in the 19th century. The only way to develop any kind of a not identical, but similar or at least comparable agreement, is if you look at the Social Union Framework Agreement of 1867. In that agreement there is a commitment to have comparable, reasonably comparable services for Canadians wherever they live.
If that is true, the federal government has to take a role, and that used to be through the federal spending power. I think it probably still will have to be through the federal spending power. I think Mr. Martin and Mr. Dryden were trying to use the federal spending power in this modern era to move the provinces in the direction of getting into it.
That would be my best answer. This is clearly provincial.
Senator Poy: The moment the money goes to the provinces, the province can control how it spends the money; it does not necessarily all have to go towards child care and early learning; am I correct?
Ms. Friendly: Well, it does not have to, but that is the bargain that they make. It is on good faith, but federalism works only if there is mutual good faith.
The federal government has tried monitoring. I think monitoring and data were supposed to become part of the picture. We do not have the child care and we do not have data. It is an agreement, a mutual agreement. That is the best you can do in a federation.
Ms. Rusch-Drutz: I think that there could be a greater agreement on part of the federal government. Comprehensive legislation on public policy with national standards for the ECLC would create standards from a federal perspective, and this would then address the lack of adequate sustainable government funding.
From the provincial basis, if we could look at the number of licensed spaces that are actually in place province-wide, we could look at compensation for professionals based on province income. We could look at standardized training for professionals based within the province or within the territory, depending on area.
I think that the ECLC pedagogy could be implemented based on the specific needs of its province and based on diversity within the province. From a provincial and territorial perspective, that lack of public knowledge about ECLC programs could be taken up in that regard.
From our perspective we see that it is a really a tripartite coming together with the provisions set out comprehensively at the federal level on legislation and comprehensive public policies.
Ms. Friendly: The best model for Canada to look at would be the European Union's model on early learning and child care.
If I were leading Canada on this issue, I would start by looking at the European Union especially France, Spain and Italy where they have many things in common. They have done a lot of work together concerning standards, et cetera.
It is different because it does not have a funding role in all that, but I think there would be many ways that if the will were there to move this forward, recognizing that it is within provincial jurisdiction. It would take money and many more policies.
Senator Poy: Ms. Mashkuri, you mentioned that some women are afraid, or children, if they are old enough, to report the abuse to the police because the lack of immigration status may make the police take them into custody.
If they have come into the country legally, why would they lack immigration status?
Ms. Mashkuri: You can come into the country legally as a visitor and if you do not renew it, or you could come here and ask for refugee status and if you have been denied, every time somebody asks for refugee status if you are denied you have a deportation order against you. There are many people who do not have status and who are living in the country without status and they are afraid to approach authorities when there are issues of violence.
Senator Poy: Are landed immigrants read their rights in their own languages? Are they informed of their rights when they immigrate to Canada? Do these women and children know that they can contact the police if they need help from family violence?
Ms. Mashkuri: When someone enters Canada as a landed immigrant, that person receives an information sheet. If the person, who can be a sponsored family member or an immigrant worker has issues about any laws or protection the information sheet will likely not cover those issues. The information is not necessarily in the immigrant's native language.
I believe we need to increase awareness that everyone is able to access his or her rights. For example, if a woman is sponsored by her spouse, she might think that she has to live in an abusive household. She might think that she cannot call the police because in doing that she will be sent home. We have to increase awareness.
There are many types of abusive relationships. Children can wait for 10 years or until they reach to the age of 25 for sponsorship, whichever comes first. That creates a situation of dependency. In some cases, the mentality alone keeps the person in an abusive family. Some people cannot make themselves go to the police for help.
Senator Munson: Senator Nancy Ruth asked about gender violence and analysis. You talked about monitoring and data. I am looking at some of the statistics here with girls, victims, eight out of 10 family-related sexual assaults. The figures are startling, disturbing. You talk about the girl child who continues to be a victim of trafficking and sexual exploitation.
I am just wondering that you said we have not taken the children's rights seriously at all, that we have not taken women's rights and rights of the girl seriously at all. I wonder whether we should have a chapter dealing specifically in highlighting women, girls, so people pay attention. It seems to be this all encompassing children, and I would like to back up Senator Nancy Ruth on this because it slips in and then it goes out and we do not seem to be paying full attention to young women.
Ms. Rusch-Drutz: One of the problems that we have noticed is that favour tends to fall depending which issues are hot in the public discourse; issues about violence against women and young girls has fallen off the public discourse. We see a great resurgence every year around December 6 and by December 7, everything is very quiet again. We would like that not to be the case.
Ms. Friendly: I think most people agree that to affect children we need to have an impact on mothers, on women. I think the UNICEF Innocente Research Centre in Florence produced on of their report cards is actually on gender issues. It is research on children, but it is about women. I think you are right; the two are quite intertwined.
Ms. Mashkuri: I think it is important when you look at rights of children to have a gender-based analysis within that as well.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Are you suggesting that it would be better to put a gender lens, race lens, income lens on the entire study? Do you thing each lens should be a separate chapter.
Ms. Friendly: It is important to regard children as citizens, not just as creatures of their parents. I do not think anybody is suggesting that it is not important to see children as children. I think that is certainly, from the child care perspective it is certainly a women's issue, it is a feminist issue, but it is also really a children's rights issue. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is primarily about the rights of children, and I think that is very important.
Ms. Mashkuri: I think if you are looking at any kind of policy there should be a gender-based analysis overall. I do not think you can pigeonhole it into one chapter. Any other oppression, whether race, income, ability, or sexual orientation should be included.
Ms. Rusch-Drutz: I do not think it is possible to look at things through one lens or one filter. In fact, I think what we are talking about is points of intersection where various lenses will coincide and we see various points of connection.
The Chairman: As usual, we are running out of time. We often start the dialogue and we do not have a chance to continue. If there are further reflections, thoughts, materials that you would like to provide to the committee, please do so. We have heard your initial messages and we thank you for them. Thank you for attending today.
Senators, we are going to move immediately to the roundtable with youth. I would encourage you to stay unless it is absolutely necessary to do otherwise.
We have been studying the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and as you know, it is a rights based convention for young people. Although it talks about children under 18, I know sometimes when we say children to 16 years of age they get a little offended, but we say it as a legal definition, not a maturation definition, per se.
We have tried to include opinions and comments from young people as to whether they know about the Convention on the Rights of the Child; what they think of it; and what they think we should do to publicise it more. We ask our panel to tell us how to live by the convention and tell us anything else that you feel we should know about when we prepare our report.
Senator Nancy Ruth has just come in. She is from Toronto. Senator Poy is also from Toronto. Senator Pearson is our age discriminated senator from Ottawa. Senator Munson claims sometimes to be from Ottawa and sometimes from New Brunswick, it is difficult to tell. And I am Senator Andreychuk from Regina. Josée Thérien is our clerk and Laura Barnett is our researcher.
Judy Finlay, Facilitator, Child and Family Services Advocacy: I will start and then the young people will have the opportunity to speak. We will introduce the young people one at a time.
I am the Chief Advocate for the Office of Child and Family Service Advocacy. I am also representing, as President, the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates. I know that you have spoken to my colleagues across the country and we made a submission to you in February 2005 and I do not want to duplicate those conversations.
I am pleased to say, however, that there are now nine provinces in Canada which have child and youth advocates. We are up in numbers since I spoke to you last. Bill 165 has had its first reading in Ontario. This bill will offer the Child and Youth Advocate independence and safeguard my office from governmental interference, which is great.
Whereas each office ensures the rights and provision of entitlements for children as defined by provincial legislation and the UNCRC and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the foundation of all our work, there is no federally appointed equivalent to the child advocate or children's commissioner in Canada. I know I do not have to tell you people this, but I am putting it on the record again.
In the absence of enabling legislation and or a mandated mechanism of compliance, the commitment to the positive development and the promotion of best interests of children ass rights bearers is diminished.
Today I wish to highlight areas that continue to be of concern to child advocates across the country, areas in which there has been limited progress and need attention, particularly as it relates to the rights of children. I will also comment on areas where there has been noticeable progress.
I will restrict my comments to two areas to save time and give everyone the opportunity to speak. My first area is First Nations children in Canada. The circumstances that First Nations children face have been the number one priority for the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates for four years now. We change our priority yearly, but this one has been number one on our list for four years.
Aboriginal children and youth are the most vulnerable group of children in Canada today and I believe in the future as well. They are more likely to be born into poverty, to suffer health problems, to be victims of maltreatment, to be placed away from their families and their communities in the provincial and territorial child welfare systems, and they are more likely to be incarcerated in our youth justice facilities. The rate of suicide among these children is frightening. This is in direct violation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We have been sorely disappointed in the attention provided First Nations people by both levels of government. The intergovernmental wrangling has led to intransigence in terms of responding to the very grave and acute needs of these children.
In Ontario, when I offer the opportunity for politicians or government officials or NGOs or service providers or foundations or even citizens to witness these conditions in the Far North, no one is able to turn a blind eye.
We formed a north-south partnership in Ontario, and it is made up of NGOs and civil society, who are joining in with 30 remote fly-in communities in the North. Surprisingly in the Far North there are no NGOs, there is no United Way, no Salvation Army, and no Indian Friendship Centres.
As a partnership, and at the request of these communities, we are assisting with basic needs. We have brought in Save the Children U.K. and Save the Children U. S. to look at the Aboriginal circumstances in the Far North. We are just rolling out those community assessments and we are organizing opportunities for youth engagement in the Far North.
Our goal through that partnership is to educate the public about the deprivation faced by First Nations people. We strive to assist in meeting their short-term need. We are working together to develop long-term strategies. Our real goal is to encourage governments to act responsibly.
My second point is about citizenship. We promote the established rhetoric of children as our future and at times this is at the expense of accepting children as our present, as our citizens of today. Children and youth have asked that we move past the principles and practice of simple youth engagement and accept them as fully participating citizens.
In my perspective, four components of citizenship need to be achieved for these young people to have full citizenship. The components include rights and responsibilities; access to these rights and responsibilities; voice and meaningful participation; and a feeling of belonging to their own community and the identity that flows from that sense of belonging.
Meaningful participation means, "Do not speak about us without us.'' Advocates across the country have been using that African phrase for close to a decade. Now it is being adopted by UNICEF and many of our colleagues across Canada. Saying it is one thing; putting it into action is yet another. This is the challenge that we face.
The biggest change I have seen in Ontario related to the UNCRC is the opportunity that we are now offering our youth to have a voice when it comes to making decisions about them. Youth are demanding that we offer them not just a voice, but meaningful participation, and they want to see change.
Five years ago there were very few true youth engagement initiatives in Ontario. Now I am excited to say there are many that serve as umbrella agencies to many networks of youth. Each is dedicated to elevating the voice of youth in concert with article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I have listed them and you have it in your handout, but I have listed about twelve umbrella organizations that promote the voice of young people.
Many youth are here today representing these organizations. I will give you a couple of examples of how youth have been offered meaningful voice and participation in Ontario, although I am aware of many more. As you know, young people had a voice in the UN Study on Violence Against Children. Young people participated in the survey and spoke to young people in focus groups across Canada. They put together their own report using both their words as well as artwork that kids drew around violence. This is one opportunity for young people to have a voice, and it has been attached to Canada's submission to the United Nations.
In addition, there was representation of young people at the legislative committee making reforms to the child welfare legislation in Ontario, and young people brought their voice to the table, not unlike today. In fact, dramatic changes were made to the legislation, the child welfare legislation in Ontario because of that voice. Policy development around children's issues in Ontario now offers the opportunity for youth to speak before any formalization of any policy.
The young people here today are from East Metro Youth Services, Violence Intervention Project, Cedarbrae Collegiate, Respect in School Everywhere, the RISE Program, Pape Adolescent Resource Centre, The Network Group, and Poplar Road Junior Public School. All of the youth are involved in one of the Office of Child and Family Service Advocacy's Committees.
I am going to turn it over to Nana from the East Metro Youth Services to introduce the young people from her office.
Nana: Some of our youth are here from East Metro Youth Services. First, we would like to thank this committee for allowing us to participate in this wonderful opportunity.
As a university student I took a children's rights class and I learned that Canada was a champion in establishing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and I am really proud that our country has done that for us and for the rest of the world.
It seems like Canada continues to be innovative and a leader in this subject since you people are actually inviting the youth to come and speak with you. It is really great that the politicians are allowing us to come out to this committee and spill out our hearts to you.
I will introduce the youth who will be speaking today. The first person is Devi, who is not a youth, but he will be speaking on behalf of them. We are going to have Lewesi here as well speaking to us, Cheryl, Lucilia and then Marcus. Following them will be Danielle, Julaine, Sarah and Aisha.
I just wanted to give you people a little bit of a heads up that most of our youth has never done anything like this before and that some of them are feeling quite nervous.
The Chairman: So are we.
Senator Nancy Ruth: We do not usually hang with you.
Nana: You people are going have to excuse us for being nervous, but there is nothing more powerful than being around youth when certain issues are actually taking place and this is something that I have an opportunity to do in my work with youth.
When I am just sitting in the office, and the youth come in the office first thing in the morning and say to my kids are out on the street it is very, very powerful. That is what you are going to hear from our youth today. They are going to come and sit down and talk to you. You can sit down with them in their own zones, their own comfort zones, so you can hear them and see them in action. So I am just going to let Devi take it over from here.
Devi: Hi, my name Devi and I am a coordinator for the RISE program. I am not going to take up much of your time. As you have been made aware, I am not a youth.
Senator Munson: You are to us.
Devi: What I wanted to point out is that this room, unfortunately it is actually shrunk to the number of youth who would have liked to have been here to participate. The reason for that is we were not able to coordinate adequately to allow these youth to be here to speak for themselves. Youth from Cedarbrae, David and Mary Thompson and the feeder schools, asked me to represent them here today, but I do not think that is fair. I am here to ask you to come to the youth. I said I would come here and ask the Senate committee if it would be willing to actually go out and meet with these youth.
I think you would be more effective, because as Nana mentioned, you would meet them in their own comfort zone. Secondly, it would take into consideration the fact that a lot of the students who are here today are in the process of writing exams. So the ones that have come here have quickly rearranged their schedules so that they could be here, but a number of other students were not able to do that.
Then also I think the forums that we set up and how we set them up, it is important that we make them youth friendly. If we are saying that they are the experts of their experience, we need to meet them in environments that allow them to express themselves. Those are the things that I wanted to point out.
I am inviting you to come out and meet these young people so they can give you the information themselves. Thank you.
Lewesi: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Lewesi. I would like to take this opportunity to just say thank you for allowing me to share my views of children's rights with you today.
Since the time allotted for this speech is short, I would like to go right to the core of some of the issues I would like to share with the panel. In taking a close look at the economic, social and cultural rights addressed by the UNCRC, we find three rights that I would personally like to bring to your attention.
These rights are the right to adequate living, adequate standard of living, and the right to education, the right to leisure, play and participation in the arts and in cultural activity.
I would like to take this time now to address the panel by speaking freely about these three provisions. The first provision that I would like to address is the right to an adequate standard of living. I live in a community, a neighbourhood that might be familiar to some of you; it is Malvern. I have seen many different types of homes in Malvern, and the living standard in some homes is very poor. My aunt, I call her my aunt, lives in one of these homes. Her basement was once flooded and there was no help from the landlord of the area, and I believe it was a TCHC co- op housing she lived in.
I would like to mention that the high living costs for the parents leads to less adequate time for them to spend with their children and less things that they can also do, in effect, to help their children become better educated, and so on. I would also like to mention that a lot of these homes are known more for their high gang and gun violence rather than their high standard of living.
The second right I would like to mention is the right to education. I can remember when I was in junior high school and I just heard about these massive cuts that were coming to the high schools prior to me getting into high school. Teachers were going on strike because they were cutting back on all these extracurricular activities. These are some essential activities for kids.
I talk about this a lot nowadays. Schooling is one of the most important socialization aspects for all children because we go through it all the way through junior kindergarten up to university. The cuts have been affecting us youth and children within the schools.
I would like to talk to you guys about behavioural teachers, classes and students. I aspire to become a behavioural teacher and to work on helping other teachers understand the reason why these behavioural kids are the way they are, and to implement better techniques and to better the classroom situations that they have to go to outside of the behavioural classes.
I am in college now and my first year placement I was in a behavioural section 20 class, and it was remarkable to see the reaction of the teachers that were with behavioural students. My teacher would often mention to me that there is a lack of assistance from the other teachers. They felt the behavioural teacher was the one that needed to deal with all the problems. If the students had any type of issue they had to simply be sent to the behavioural class right away. I found that very heartbreaking.
I want to mention that if you take a look at the neighbourhoods that these behavioural kids come from, you notice a trend that they are in the same co-ops that I spoke of earlier. Also, I would like to talk about kids being misdiagnosed.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Can you tell me what behavioural class is. Is it a truant class for the so-called bad kids?
Lewesi: Yes, senator that is what it is; they keep changing the name.
Yes. There are kids going through the school system that are being misdiagnosed and given these pills. I heard wind of this one child, they had a program on CBC the other night, of this one child being misdiagnosed so many times, and he had to have — all of his pills could fit in the palm of his hands. It was terrifying to hear, but going through the schooling system I can see that these kids are often diagnosed with these problems just so they can be pushed out of the way.
I would also like to mention about kids living in my neighbourhood. They have a lack of the ability to enjoy themselves just to be kids. I could speak of certain kids that I know that have to be locked away in their home because of therapy and violent situations or being kidnapped and so on. There are even kids that are locked in their homes because they know there are no other kids outside to play with.
I would like to go on for hours. Three minutes is simply not enough time for me. So I am pleading with the panel to continue to work towards a better future for the children of tomorrow and to engage with those who are willing to share their thoughts. Thank you so very much.
Cheryl: Hi, my name is Cheryl. I am Ojibwa, from Ontario, but I was born and raised here in Toronto. I work for East Metro Youth Services with the violence intervention project. Sorry, I am a bit nervous. If I turn all red, you will know why.
The Chairman: When I sit next to the Senator Nancy Ruth, I am nervous too.
Cheryl: Aboriginal children living off reserve are not being able to learn about their true history. Some of these children do not understand why their parents may not be teaching them their own language or teaching them about their own culture. This is because their ancestors were put into residential schools all over Canada. This has caused all the generation after to crumble and to turn to alcohol and drugs to bury their sorrow and loss of identity.
These aims of assimilation caused devastation for all those who were physically, sexually and emotionally abused. This has also caused the generations of residential schools to pass the trauma on to their children.
Aboriginal children and youth need to learn knowledge on their culture and language to survive. If this cycle continues and Aboriginal culture and language does not get put back into these children and youth they may be lost forever and they will not have their own ethnicity.
Aboriginal children and youth today need to learn their true history because it can save their lives and help them to have an identity and to succeed in the real world. Their heritage needs to be brought back to life in order for their next generation to pass on their culture and language.
If Aboriginal children and youth can learn their true history, culture and language they will be balanced, mentally, physically emotionally and spiritually. This will make them whole and they will not turn to alcohol or drugs to hide, but would be going down a new path to improve their culture for all the generations to come.
A solution might be to give Aboriginal youth a voice to address these issues by putting together programs that focus on young Aboriginals. By empowering youth to educate other children and youth who are Aboriginal will definitely grab their attention. Another idea would be to have an event to tackle these issues where children and youth would brainstorm solutions to some of the main problems in young Aboriginals today. They also can create a task force that will put through ideas on resolving issues that are brought up at these events.
If youth were given a voice to address issues today in young Aboriginals it would benefit this generation in a tremendous way because they would learn about their history and possibly find solutions to their problems. Also by giving them a voice, children and youth would begin want to carry on their ethnicity for all their generations to come.
I would like to thank you for listening to what I have to say and would like to invite you to my program if you would like to talk more about Aboriginal struggles. Thank you very much.
Lucilia: Hi. My name is Lucilia and I am here with the BIP, Balanced Intervention Project.
I am here just to briefly talk to you people about coming from a single mother's background. I am a single mother with two little girls. My daughters are five years and two years of age. I would just like to let you know it is not my fault; I do not choose to be single. It is just that all the responsibilities fall to one person.
I think this alone causes violence because there is so much poverty in young single mothers today. Sorry, I am so nervous. Me and my other friends, we have been through quite a lot because we live in poverty. Basically that is what I am saying.
Lack of housing has really affected me as well as my kids. I am not able to get housing because I am not priority. To me that is a big issue because I feel like being a single mother raising two kids, I should get priority. I should not have to wait five to 10 years. Right now I am homeless. I live in a shelter and I am looking for a decent place for my kids. I am not able to do that because I am not able to get housing.
They are forcing me to go out and pay market rent, which forces me to be on welfare. Welfare is not really helping with the basic needs that I need. I am still left at a level where sometimes my personal needs are not met and my kids suffer from that.
I think that the government has the responsibility to protect and help the poor and to give more housing especially for single moms with kids because these kids are getting affected just because of the fact that their parents are not stable. Because I am not able to provide my kids with what they need, sometimes I think that these kids act out in violence just for the simple fact their parents are not able to provide for them. I think the government thinks that they are helping us, but if they were then how come we are still here? Why are we still here bringing up this issue, really?
The Chairman: Are you in the school system also or are you now just trying to look after your children?
Lucilia: I am just trying look after my children, but there are many things that are stopping me from doing that. I think it is a cycle that I can never break out of unless you people honestly pass a law that market rent should be 50 per cent less. There should be more housing for us, because we need that help we really do.
It is a good idea if you people could come out one day and see how we live, see what we go through. Because a lot of other single mothers are not here today, we do not have their voice spoken, I think you guys should come out and see where we live. Thank you.
Marcus: Hi, everyone, I am Marcus. I am here from East Metro Youth Service. I am here to talk about racism in the community against Black youth.
I wrote this speech to talk to you guys about how the government has been discriminating against Black youth and how it affects not only me, but other youth in the GTA.
The Black youth today are being judged in such a negative way. Why are we seen in a different way? Is it just because the way we act? Why do the Black youth of today have to struggle in life, struggle and live such a tough life?
It seems to me like Black youth are the ones always getting caught for certain crimes, and just because of our skin colour we are then seen differently by the others in society. They would think of us like we are always up to something wrong towards people or the environment. When someone else of a different race does something wrong, that youth gets slapped on the wrist, nothing more. It is as though because of things we wear, society thinks we are criminals or up to some kind of criminal activity. Sometimes we are not able to get our point across to the police, whose job it is to protect and serve the community. It states in the book of rights that we all have freedom of speech, but we are hardly ever heard. I find they are always looking down at youth, even when some of us youth have been trying to grow up in all these rough environments.
In the Black community, the youth always seem to find themselves in many situations of hardship. When a Black youth tries to find a job, he or she is always seen as troubled youth without experience and difficult to train. Therefore, we are often seen as nonexistent within the work force. I just think it would be better if Black youth in Canada and throughout the world were not discriminated against.
I feel we should not be seen and judged from the outside because character matters more than your appearance. As the great Martin Luther King Junior once said:
I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.
I just want to thank you people for giving me a chance to hear my opinion about racism in the community. I just hope you people can come down to East Metro where I work and see the environment. I would like the committee to come to Markham and Scarborough. Thanks.
Danielle: Hi, my name is Danielle and thank you for inviting me to speak to your committee. I would like to talk about four articles in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Article 11 states that kids have the right not to be kidnapped. Sometimes when I go to Wal-Mart I look at the wall of missing kids by the washrooms. It makes me feel like there is not enough being done to find missing kids. Is the government doing everything possible to find missing kids?
Sometimes I get mad because it seems to me that they are not doing all they can. Why is it that always the same kids — some kids have been missing for so long? Sometimes it seems like everyone, including the government, just gives up and puts them on a wall hoping someone will see them.
What else is the government doing to find missing kids. I know if I were missing I would want to know that you and the government would never give up, even if it is been a long time.
I think there should be a section in every newspaper for missing kids. It is not like your dog or cat ran away. Everyone should be spreading the news as much as possible. You advertise missing cats and dogs, but is not a person more important? It is sad if your cat or dog runs away, but if it were your child would not you be angry as a parent to just have your kid's picture put on a wall and tucked away in some Wal-Mart somewhere?
We have the internet too. Why are not we posting some pictures of missing kids on the internet in places where people go daily, like MSN or Yahoo?
Article 42 and article 4 talk about the knowledge of rights. I only found out about the rights of the kids when my mom asked me if I wanted to volunteer at the advocacy office. I have learned a great deal since I started working there. I am lucky to have learned as much as I have, but many of my friends misinterpret their rights. I do not think people know that kids have their own set of rights. I think they need to talk about it a lot more in school. It is important for parents and teachers to understand children's rights better too.
Article 31 talks about leisure, play and culture. Some parents are so busy with work and commuting and doing all that stuff around the house. Sometimes it is hard for kids to find time to do outside activities. Not all parents have the money or extra time for activities. Some kids just get left watching TV and it is not always fair. Also, some teachers give way too much homework and it makes it hard to find time to just relax and play.
Article 12 refers to respect for the views of the child. One area that bothers me is that some kids are pushed too hard to be better all the time. Some kids get pushed a lot, even if they tell everyone they are happy the way they are. You can only push a child so hard. If they are doing poorly they may need help. If they are smart and doing well why do we push some kids so hard and treated them as if they are trophies. If a kid says he or she is happy and his or her grades are good, why do parents expect more? Why not just let them be kids?
I also want to say I am really glad that I am involved in the advocacy office and able to work on the newsletter. I think it is a great way for kids to get involved and tell the government what they think. I hope I get to keep working on it and that kids write to us.
I would like to encourage the Senate committee to hear from more kids. I would like to invite you to my school and hear what it is like to be a kid in Canada. I would love to introduce you to lots of other kids like me. I know they would enjoy it. It was great to come and talk to you.
Julaine: Hi. My name is Julaine and I am from Pape Adolescent Resource Centre, PARC. I am going talk about youth in care. What we get most in care is stereotyped. We are always stereotyped for being bad or not doing what we are supposed to be doing, but there are kids in care that push themselves to the limit to do everything to try to do everything right. You are not motivating us, you are not helping us, you are putting us down 24/7.
There is like a lot of stuff out there. It is just the thing that we do not get the chance to talk about it a lot. When we do talk about it, people are like, yeah, we will deal with it, we will deal with it. We do not want to hear you will deal with it; we want you to do something about it. We want you to actually put toward and say, okay, it is been done and this is what happen.
I always hear in my life, yeah, I will talk to the person about it; I will talk to the person about it. I will get around to doing it, and nothing ever happens. So you have to step forward and say, okay, since you are not going do anything about it I will try to do something about it.
We try to talk to you guys and you guys are yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time, I heard you the second time, but nothing happened. And we get stereotyped a lot. For example, if you go out on the road and you are with your foster mom you are like, "Oh, this is my foster mom,'' and you are like, "Oh, I am so sorry to hear that'' or "I am so sorry that you end up that way'' and such like that. "I hope your parents are suffering right now.'' Like that is kind of rude. If you can do something about that, it would be great.
Sarah: Hi, I am Sarah.
Aisha: I am Aisha.
Sarah: We will be talking together. We both attend the Ambassador program, and PARC and their probation officers refer most of the people from our school. Aisha and I discussed a problem that both of us have, which is finding jobs. I am also in care of Children's Aid.
Aisha: I am in care too.
Sarah: When I was living at my mom's house, I used to live in project housing. A big problem I used to have was finding jobs. I have done a lot of volunteer work. I am fluent in both French and English. I have always tried looking for a job, and the only place that ever employed me was PARC and that was the project I did over the summer. But other than that, a lot of the time when I go apply for a job I feel like I am being judged because of my piercings. I understand they not allowed in the food industry, but I just have a feeling that employers do not even bother looking at my resumé.
Another huge problem for me when I was living at my mother's house was the area that I lived in, and Aisha had the same problem. Because of my age, I do not think that potential employers believe that I am as capable of doing jobs that any other 20-year-old can do. I have a lot of volunteer experience and I just think that because of the fact that I am 17 years old just I am taken as an irresponsible person. I do not think they take notice of the fact that I am just as capable. I mean, I was given a lot of responsibilities at a very young age. I mean, I take things seriously.
Aisha: You already know my name is Aisha. I am also a youth in care. I lived with my nom in subsidized housing in not really the best neighbourhood; it is kind of a little corrupted here and there. The neighbourhood is not motivated because everybody is a typical person that is either on welfare or they live there and their grandparents lived there. Like, their history is there.
There is a job centre there. And I have a lot of problems finding jobs, like Sarah. I sent out resumes for like the past four months and I am all over the place. I find it hard because there are s so many places, like job centres and the YMCA, all those places to help us, but they only can help us to a certain point because they do not get enough funding. They are not funded properly or organized properly.
We are just lost in the sauce. Like, we go to places, we go to get help, but the help is not there for us. They usually look at us like we have no experience. The jobs they have offer us, like telemarketer, places that do not really qualify for the jobs that we are looking for. Then I think that they should give us a try also because we do have responsibility. Being a youth in care you have to have a lot of responsibility and you gain a lot of responsibility just being youth in care. There are all kinds of requirements like extended care, living on your own, and you have to develop all these skills.
We are qualified in many ways to get proper jobs, but people do not look at us because we are young and we are stereotyped. I think it is because of where I live too. I put my address on my resumé and people just do not call back because they see my neighbourhood, and I think that is really unfair.
Sarah: Also, I mean, it has come down to the point where sometimes — I have handed out so many resumés to the point where I even lost count. It has gotten to the point where I think should I take my piercings out? I really love my piercings and they represent who I am. I just know that if I take my piercings out I am going to be so sad.
Also being a youth in care, I wish some people would understand — a lot of people just think we are troublesome because you are in care of Children's Aid. They think we caused all this trouble and all this stuff, but really, it is the situation we are put in. I guess — it is just tough like that.
The Chairman: Is there anyone else who wants to say a few words?
Stephanie Clark, Facilitator, Students Commission of Canada, Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement: Apparently, I am sitting in for Stoney McCart, who is my boss; I do that a lot lately. My name is Stephanie Clark and I represent the Students Commission of Canada, the Centre for Excellence for Youth Engagement.
I am no longer a young person, even though I may look it. I am kind of almost an adult. One day soon I hope I will be. My role here today is just to support the young people who are coming to you from the Students Commission.
You have Nadia, Simone, Jeremy and Joel, or whatever name he is calling himself lately; it is constantly changing.
The only thing I really want to say is that I am always blown away by how privileged I am to work in this field. I did not really mean to get involved in it, but I sort of was pulled into it and the Students Commission is really good at trapping people. I am a lifer, by choice obviously. The power in this room is so overwhelming.
As you pointed out earlier, there are so many people that are not here. A couple of people drop out due to exams, as much as they would love to be here, it is just not possible. I know the committee has released an interim report and within the next couple of weeks, we hope to submit a report to this committee. We hope to get responses from a greater breadth of people. We acknowledge there is a lot of wisdom out there.
Anyone who is here, I invite you guys to participate as well. Everyone I think — you can come and talk to me after if you want to be involved. That is really all I have to say. Simone, do you want to go?
Simone: Hi, my name is Simone. I am with Project PEACE Team associated with the Students Commission and the Toronto police regarding violence in our city. PEACE stands for public education and crime eradication. One of the subjects I want to stress on today is child abuse and child molestation.
I was at a seminar two weeks ago where they stressed the different ways on how to catch a pedophile or ways of keeping your kids safe or knowing if your kid is being molested.
We were — there were interesting videos, I should say, they were disturbing, but very interesting clips of former pedophiles talking about how they lured children into their little world. And it was sickening to know that it was done right under their parents or their guardian's back. I was really touched by that — not touched, sorry, I was very concerned to know that it is very big thing that is happening.
I cannot stress enough that it is one of the most disturbing and growing issues in our community and even though I have not experienced it myself, I believe that it is very important to spread the word. We need to stand united, more united when we care for our children. The saying that it takes a village to raise a child can be very helpful in reminding us that — to remember that children are our future.
I know that the child offenders who are caught are either taken to a recovery system or put in jail, like the severe kinds, but I think when most of them are released some of them disappear either to start a new life or to lay low for a while until it is safe to offend again. Most of them move around and may offend somewhere else. They target another community and the people in the community do not know that where they live is no longer a safe haven.
What can we do about this? What I want to see done is when an offender is released there should be a province-wide press release notifying every community. I think every group home or church or library, community store, et cetera, should be notified so they can be more prepared when it comes to keeping our children safe from these people.
For the severe offenders that cannot recover or change their ways, like I think they should be kept isolated from the communities so it is less likely for them to be tempted to start offending again.
We also have to help the kids that are recovering from being molested. There has to be more support when a child is going through the process of rebuilding his or her relationships with adults. That is pretty much it, you know.
Jeremy: Hi, I am Jeremy. I have been working with the Students Commission since September as a co-op student. I have also been part of the police project, like Simone.
The major topic that I have come across with youth, not only Toronto, but all across Canada is the stigma created through lack of education about different topics. The main one I decided to talk about was homosexual discrimination.
The stigma found within small communities can also be found within major communities such as Toronto. This happens not only within cities, but also within the different communities in the cities. An example of that would be Little Italy and Chinatown in Toronto itself. A lot of it, as I have seen through my friends, is homosexual discrimination.
Nobody is born a hater. We are all taught hate through mentors, lack of education and fear of the unknown. Homosexual youth, and youth of any orientation that have questions and thoughts about themselves, are afraid to come out and ask questions due to the stigma and negativity created from the peers.
My proposal is education through organizations within the communities. Like Toronto has PFLAG, but I suggest more of an open organization that is available in and outside schools. I think it should have coordinators of all possible orientations, whether homosexual, heterosexual, transgender, et cetera.
You could see someone walking into a workshop or walking into a building in which more stigmas or more rumours or discrimination could be created, but instead have online chats in which people could log on and just ask questions under an anonymous name. You could have phone-in chat lines, like Kids Help Phone, except based on questions which the youth need to know to help them understand themselves. Once the program has gone on for six months to a year and the communities and the adults feel comfortable with it then I think we could start to bring in workshops to the schools. These workshops could also go into community centres, places like that, where everyone is welcome. In those places, youth can learn and have activities with questions and results showing that not everyone is completely on this line of whether they consider themselves completely straight or completely gay. It would show them that all people have the qualities of each other. This would show people that when they discriminate they are discriminating against something that is already a part of them.
Through the notes and the planning created through this, a manual could be created, a book, which could be publicized in libraries, school libraries, public libraries or even in the government itself. The adults could read the manual and then could create their own workshops and give back to the community what the community taught them.
These workshops could break down the stigma and borders created from fear and lack of education. We should have these workshops in not only Toronto or major cities, but in smaller cities like Saskatoon and just different individual communities which are isolated, and these ideas just spread like wildfire. Even if we cannot make every single person today have a holistic view, if one person's outlook is changed today, then it is a step towards the future.
Joel: My name is Joel. That is the actual saying. Nothing has been changed.
The Chairman: Like my name, no one can pronounce it.
Joel: So we have something in common. I am also part of the Students Commission, which is associated with Project PEACE. I know you people have been here since one o'clock, but I would ask you guys to hold on just a little bit longer.
The Chairman: A few of us can, but you will notice some of my colleagues, the problem is that flight arrangements, train arrangements to get cheaper fares, and the rules. Some of us are here, but that is why some of the rest have left because they were told the cut-off was five o'clock, so they made arrangements and now they cannot change them. That is why we are on a time frame.
That is the other thing you learn from life. You run out of time all the time.
Joel: What I would like to talk about today is bullying and harassment. They kind of coincide with each other, so I will be quick.
As a youth, especially when I was very young, coming from kindergarten to even up to Grade 5 and what not — that is my twin sister, she was with me during that time. I am going to speak to something that she does not know too much about, but also I was bullied as a youth. There would be some thing from say, you know, "Joel is dumb, Joel you cannot do this, you cannot do that.'' Even though today we call each other "stupid'' and what not, sometimes people do take it to heart and I think that sometimes you forget that.
As a youth when I was told stuff like that it gave me very much low self esteem. I came from a good family background, so I survived, I could say, like that and I was given a lot of positive attitude to keep pressing on, try and do the best you can and what not. I feel as though my family kind of had me bred into a good type of environment. I was always able to keep a smile on no matter what. I feel that is what brought me through, but many people who are bullied have a lot of different backgrounds, coming from a lot of different walks of life. I feel when they are told things like that as well, they do take it to heart and there are a lot of things associated with that.
One thing I did not even remember, it was one of the most important things when I was talking to somebody about this too, was that bullying and also harassment, which it does lead to when you get to a company and they make fun of you and it does turn into harassment. So even from suicide, we have a lot of suicide and even, in some cases, murder has been the cause of bullying and harassment, so people who even hung themselves because they couldn't take it anymore or say somebody is beating somebody up and it just went too far. Cases like those, it was due to bullying and harassment.
A lot of this goes on, a lot of bullying does go on, even though a lot of us have had experience, it goes a lot through youth and that is why the most target is the children, say, the ages from eight years and above.
The great, very murderous, very evil man, Mr. Adolf Hitler said that if he got a child until he was eight years old the child would be his. He meant that many of those stages from birth until age of eight are when the children soak up everything. It is when they learn. When it comes to bullying and what not, they take those experiences in and it does traumatize them in a very big way, even though they could be the richest man or woman on earth when they grow up, but the traumatic effect does have an impact on their life. If they cannot take on the bully they'll take on people inside the family or those they feel are subject and not doing anything about it which causes this big chain which really needs to be broken.
What I think they need to do, when I say they I mean the government and the Senate committee as well, there's no sense me telling you guys to come and see what's going on, because this is an issue that everybody knows about and you guys have been told time and time again about situations like this. So I feel more is that you guys should be looking towards making more innovative programs — because we do have programs, but I do not feel it is enough.
I feel there should be more innovative programs as well as more programs that actually have a follow-up. Because a bully could be beside me right now, like Jeremy could be my bully right now. By the time we get outside it goes in one ear and out the other, they forget, next couple of days or whatever. But there should be more innovative programs, there should be more follow-ups, more of a hotline maybe should publish things like that.
That is pretty much it. I am going to hand it over to Nadia.
Nadia: Hi, I am Nadia. I will do my best to keep it short. There are like 2,000 people in my school. That is only the students, okay, and there might be more, I have not counted.
There are 150 of those kids on welfare, okay. A lot of kids who do not go on welfare do have jobs and the curriculum is really hard. People in academic classes have a lot of work to do and teachers do not take note of their jobs, and jobs are after school and because it is after school jobs it is not like nine to five, you are only working in the daytime. You are working late at night and there is no time to do a lot of homework. Some teachers expect you to do an essay overnight and there is no time for that. A lot of kids lose marks on that. There are programs at schools for people who cannot afford things and not everybody is going to come out for that, right. Sometimes some kids find it embarrassing. Some kids just refuse to even acknowledge that. So, yeah, that is it; too much work.
The Chairman: And too little time. I know.
Nana: I have just been asked to close.
You have to think of yourselves as unique, but also as a part of your environment. Politicians need to realize that you guys can change that environment. The issues are unaffordable housing, discrimination, all those kind of things. You guys have the power to do something about that. So that is one thing that I got out of this discussion.
The second thing I got out of the discussion is that you have the right to participate in a UN convention. I think because the youths have gone through all their problems, they are the experts on the topics that they talk about. I think a lot of times we put them in situations where they are part of talking how it feels. We also need to recognize that they have a really big power and a voice to not only say how it feels, but also what it takes to change it.
Because of that, we want to thank you and we appreciate the chance for our youth to speak with you guys today and also to stress how important and wonderful it would be if you could spend some time with any one of these youth and just give them an opportunity to talk a little bit more with you guys about these issues.
The Chairman: Thank you for summing it up and making it easier on me. We always run out of time and we always have too much to do. So the good news or the bad news, whichever, it is not going to change much. You are still going to be stressed, you are still going to have too much work and we all have to cope. The Senate committee has to cope with time frames and things.
I want to thank all of you for coming. As some you have said, it is not easy. It is difficult. You did not know what you were getting into. We do the same thing. When you land somewhere you do not know who is going to say what to you. We still have nerves, so we can just imagine back — I am not sure I would have the nerve to come and speak to a Senate committee. I appreciate that you have that much initiative that you could come.
What I am taking out of this session is that we are learning that we have to listen to you more, to talk to you more, and to see where you live, how you live and what your problems are. Too often, we take what children need from what happened to us and we forget that that was decades and decades ago.
I think we learn again that the convention was right when it said to involve children and youth and listen to them. They have a responsibility for their own lives and we should hear them. So you have started us on that.
The other is the point you made that as each one of you talked, you are very unique, very different in how you express yourself, in what you have experienced, and I think what you want for yourselves is all a little bit different. We keep talking Convention of the Rights of the Child. It is not just about the child, it is about people. Each one of you is very different and I think that has not come out in our report as strongly as it should. And I think you have done us a service that it will be incorporated into the report.
Finally, I am going to leave my card so that if any of you are in Ottawa, you know that big building called Parliament, please come and see us. It is open, it is your Parliament, and you should come any time you can. I would like to come and see you in your area.
I should tell you my background. I come from Regina and I used to be a Family Court judge. I can tell you that 80 per cent of my caseload was Aboriginal, 20 per cent was the population, so there is the problem. Sir, Saskatoon is not isolated. I was born there. Toronto is isolated. Come on out West. We will show you we are not isolated.
In my caseload I learned a lot about young people in conflict with the law and conflict with the foster system and I should tell you, I was a Family Court judge for twelve years and I went away for seven years. In those days, court was private. So after seven years I came back to Regina and there was this young woman yelling, "Judge Andreychuk, Judge Andreychuk.'' I said, "I am not a judge anymore.'' And she said, "I am not a delinquent anymore.'' And she told me about how she went back to school, how she got her life together, how she reclaimed her kids. And she said, "It is what you did.'' I said, "No, it is what you did. I just happened to be there.''
I think the government response is we have to have the resources, but it is you who will make a change in your lives. By coming out and speaking out for what's important to you, you have started. So thank you.
The committee adjourned.