Journal des débats 1989-févr-06 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Ms. Bryden: I want to draw to the attention of the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) that last week it appears that the no-pets clause in an apartment lease was used to obtain an eviction notice against Marian and Richard Ryll. It appears that their only offence is that they own a cat, but did sign a no-pets clause because there was no other kind of lease offered to them.

I would like to suggest that the Attorney General must bring in an immediate amendment to the Landlord and Tenant Act to outlaw no-pets clauses, because they are being abused by many landlords to obtain vacant possession of buildings that they wish to raise the rents on or convert to condominiums, and they are discriminatory against all the people who are tenants. Forty per cent of the population of the province are tenants, 50 per cent in Metro Toronto. They do not have the right to have the pleasure of owning a pet.

It seems to me we must rectify this discrimination against them as soon as possible. I hope that the Attorney General will make a commitment to bring in a bill immediately, and certainly before this eviction takes place on April 1.

LOUISE DE KIRILINE LAWRENCE

Mr. Harris: I rise today to pay tribute to internationally acclaimed author, naturalist and humanitarian Louise de Kiriline Lawrence of North Bay, on the occasion of her 95th birthday this past week. Few Canadian women have experienced life as richly as Louise de Kiriline Lawrence.

Born into an aristocratic family in Sweden, she served as a Red Cross nurse during the Russian Revolution, where she met and married Gleb de Kiriline, their incredible story being told in her book Another Winter, Another Spring.

Following the tragic events of her husband’s capture and ultimate execution, she emigrated to Canada, settling in northern Ontario where Nurse de Kiriline and her sled dogs became a familiar and welcome sight. A call from Dr. Norman Dafoe to become head nurse for the Dionne quintuplets began and ended a new chapter in her life, for she left nursing after that experience to find peace and tranquillity in the natural world.

A log cabin home in the pines of Pimisi Bay between North Bay and Mattawa became the ideal base from which to pursue a new vocation as a naturalist. Her observations, as recorded in The Lovely and the Wild, won her the coveted John Burroughs Medal and the Sir Charles G. D. Roberts Special Award from the Canadian Authors Association. Many of her articles have been published over the years in Audubon magazine.

I regret to inform the House that her husband, Len Lawrence, to whom her book The Loghouse Nest is dedicated, passed away last week. I join with all members in expressing sympathy for her loss and in paying tribute in celebration of the life of a truly remarkable Canadian, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence.

LEGISLATIVE PAGE

Mrs. Fawcett: Mr. Speaker, perhaps you and the members of this House have noticed a new page in our midst. It is my pleasure to introduce to everyone Leila Kumpula from my riding of Northumberland.

Why is Leila just now joining us? Approximately four weeks ago, while en route to begin her duties at Queen’s Park, Leila and her family stopped off to do some skiing at Kirby. As ill luck would have it, she suffered an accident, dislocated her kneecap and wound up in Scarborough Centennial Hospital where a complete leg cast was put on. Her doctor has now given her permission to put some weight on the leg and, after considerable pleading with the medical authorities and her family, Leila has joined her companion pages for the rest of the term of duty.

I noticed last week, though, that medical history may have been made in that it appears this affliction may be contagious. As I happened to look up to find Leila coming into the House followed by two pages, all three possessed the identical limp.

Seriously, though, I am sure that you, Mr. Speaker, and the members of this House will commend Leila for her commitment, determination and enthusiasm for her duties, a lesson we can all take to heart.

Please join me in welcoming Leila Kumpula from Northumberland to Queen’s Park.

LANDLORDS’ RESTRICTIONS ON PETS

Mr. Philip: Today, I am introducing a private member’s bill amending the Landlord and Tenant Act to ban any provision in a lease prohibiting a tenant from keeping a pet. The ruling by Judge Gotlib on February 2 was that either the Rylls must move out of their apartment or get rid of their cat, Fluffy. The judge also told the court that it is up to the lawmakers of the province to pass a law specifically banning such contracts if they believe they are unfair.

On January 9, I pointed out to the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) that some 10,000 animals are being euthanized in Ontario each year as a result of no-pets clauses which force responsible pet owners, such as seniors, to dispose of their pets. The Attorney General’s callous response was, “These people must decide sooner or later whether they wish to keep pets or not.”

The Landlord and Tenant Act clearly provides for the removal of a pet where that pet is destroying property or bothering other tenants. No-pets clauses punish the innocent, responsible pet owner instead of focusing on those few who are irresponsible.

According to the court decision, Fluffy, a 16-year-old, spayed, declawed, partly blind cat, and her family will no longer be able to reside in their apartment. My bill, if passed, will save the lives of an estimated 10,000 Fluffys each year in Ontario. It will also save the heartache of 10,000 families or individuals faced with the problem of having to choose between their pets or a roof over their heads.

I urge the government to introduce similar legislation. I urge the Attorney General to show a little more empathy.

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr. Jackson: I rise to draw attention to the Young Offenders Act and the manner of its implementation in this province. In my own community of Burlington, an 18-year-old triple murderer was recently released. Halton Regional Police know who he is but not where he lives, and this information was only provided after I raised the matter in the Legislature.

Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police, whose duty is to protect the municipality’s over 400,000 residents, have not been so notified, this despite the fact that the young offender spends every working day at his place of employment in Hamilton.

In my own community posters have appeared warning, a triple murderer is “coming soon to a community near you.” While I do not support the tactics or the method employed to convey them, the fears of my constituents are very real and very understandable.

The government can, by order in council, decide to notify a school principal, the local police or others who are directly affected of the killer’s record and identity. It could and should take this step. The government could have told the Midland police chief of the existence of a young offenders group home in his community.

The Liberals could have released to Metropolitan Toronto Police the names and identities of young offenders at the York Detention Centre. This might have allowed police, working with one offender’s mother, to meet the escapees at a Highway 401 gas station instead of having to cope with the carnage of a high-speed auto accident.

The federal government must act to correct the Young Offenders Act --

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has now expired.

Mr. Jackson: -- the brainchild of Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

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SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Ms. Poole: In September 1988, the report of the Social Assistance Review Committee, entitled Transitions, was released. This committee was appointed in 1986 by the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) and has recommended a major restructuring of Ontario’s social assistance system. The report debunked the myth of the so-called welfare bum and revealed that over 70 per cent of those on benefits are children, sole-support parents and the disabled.

The government is currently examining the report in its entirety, not only to cost the 274 recommendations but also to determine how reforms can best be implemented within our budgetary responsibilities. We already know the cost of reform will be high. Initial calculations indicate that the cost of the first stage alone will be approximately $600 million.

It is obvious this government is committed to reform. While awaiting the SARC report, the government spent $337 million in improvements to social assistance. I believe the real challenge now, the challenge for each and every member of this House, is to find a way to finance the SARC reforms so that we may translate this commitment into action.

CONVERSION OF RENTAL ACCOMMODATION

Mr. Philip: Once again, we see that the Liberal government of David Peterson cannot be trusted to keep its promises. More than a year ago, on January 7, 1988, I pointed out to the Minister of Housing (Ms. Hošek) that a majority of rental buildings constructed since 1975 are registered as condominiums. At any time, the tenants can be evicted as the units are sold. The minister’s response was that she was talking to all people who were concerned about this and would try hard to protect the tenants.

On April 27, the minister promised to respond to my question in the House and stated that she would consider the whole issue when looking at the Rental Housing Protection Act. The Rental Housing Protection Act has now been introduced by the Minister of Housing; however, it contains no protection for the people who have lived for years in a building they consider to be a rental building and who are being evicted as these units are being sold off as condominium units.

It has been estimated that 80 per cent of the more than 100,000 private sector apartment units built since 1975 are technically registered as condominiums, even though they have always been rented out strictly as rental apartment units. At any time, the owner of the building can announce that he is deciding to sell each unit. This means that in Ontario we have a potential of 80,000 families being evicted.

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has expired.

Mr. Philip: The minister has broken her promise to 80,000 families.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. That completes the allotted time for members’ statements. Statements by the ministry. None? No statements?

Hon. Mr. Conway: I believe the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) was to make a statement. He is tied up in traffic. If you wish unanimous consent, I am quite happy to -- I do not want to hold up the House. He will make a statement upon his arrival. He is due.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I do not think it would be appropriate to proceed. There are 12 cabinet ministers listed as being away. The minister who is supposed to make a statement on a very important issue is not here. I think we should recess until there are some cabinet ministers here.

Mr. Harris: I would concur with the suggestion that is being put forward by the House leader for the New Democratic Party. I would further suggest that, due to the efforts of both the NDP House leader and myself, we are probably able to proceed right now, because I see the minister finding his place.

Mr. Speaker: This might be the appropriate time to call for ministerial statements once again.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I apologize to the House for being late.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I would like to report to the Legislature today on two tragic incidents over the past few days involving young offenders. As members will no doubt be aware, early on Friday morning Krista Sepp, an employee of Kinark Child and Family Services in Midland, was brutally murdered. Two people, including one young offender, have been charged in her death.

Also on the weekend, seven youths who were awaiting trial escaped from custody at my ministry’s York Detention Centre; five of those youngsters were later killed in an automobile accident on Highway 401 near Napanee.

On behalf of the government, I want to extend my condolences to the families of all six individuals who died over the weekend. I am sure all members will join me in sharing the sense of grief those families must now be feeling.

The police have investigated and are continuing to look into both of these incidents. As well, the coroner is investigating the murder of Krista Sepp and the events leading up to her death.

While the Young Offenders Act and the police and coroner’s investigations place some restrictions on my ministry’s ability to investigate, my staff have been investigating both of these incidents, and I would like to report to the House on the information I have available to me at this time.

Kinark Child and Family Services operates a group home in Midland for emotionally disturbed youngsters. The facility is funded by my ministry and has a capacity of four. At the time of the incident, there were two young offenders housed in the group home. Staff of my ministry in conjunction with Kinark have been reviewing the procedures that were followed in the case. At this time, however, the police and the coroner are still investigating this tragedy. As a result, I am not at liberty to discuss any of the details leading to the death of Krista Sepp.

My staff and staff of Kinark Child and Family Services are working with police and the coroner to provide any information they may require in their investigations. As well, my ministry will be continuing to review all of the events leading to this incident. As I will discuss later and in more detail, the government is going to examine all of the broad questions raised by this tragedy.

With regard to the escape of seven youths from my ministry’s York Detention Centre, I would like to provide the following details. On Friday evening, the York Detention Centre was operating with a staff of 13 and 40 residents. The escape occurred from a part of the detention centre that is called the boys’ unit.

There were nine youths in the unit with a normal staff complement of two workers. One of the workers took a resident to see the staff doctor and had another resident accompany him. Shortly after that worker left, seven of the remaining youths surrounded the other worker, took her keys and locked her in a room. As a safety precaution, workers are required to carry keys to the fire escape at all times. The youths used that key to open the fire escape door and left the building.

The events following their escape are currently under investigation by the police. However, all members know that five of the escaped youths were killed in a terrible accident on Highway 401 near Napanee.

There are many more questions to be answered about both incidents, but one horrible fact remains clear: Six people are dead. However, we must deal with the serious issues raised by the events of the last few days. This morning, the Ontario Attorney General (Mr. Scott) wrote the Honourable Doug Lewis, Minister of Justice, requesting immediate attention be given to the pressing need to amend the Young Offenders Act. This is a follow-up to his unanswered letter of November 17 to Mr. Lewis’s predecessor.

Today, I am calling on the Minister of Justice to immediately convene a meeting of all attorneys general from across Canada to review and examine the act and our experience to date. I am also announcing today two reviews, which will begin immediately.

First, my ministry will review security measures in place at all secure detention, secure custody and observation and detention homes directly operated by my ministry. The review will be carried out by my ministry staff in co-operation with staff of the Ministry of Correctional Services and the Ontario Provincial Police.

Second, we will begin an immediate review of the staffing guidelines in facilities housing young offenders. This review will look at staffing in those facilities directly operated by the government, as well as those transfer payment agencies which admit young offenders to their programs on behalf of the ministry.

We are particularly concerned about providing guidance as to when more than one staff person should be on duty. I repeat, the reviews will begin immediately and I expect to receive the reports within 90 days.

The events of the last few days have been tragic, but we in government and the members of this Legislature have to be concerned about a side-effect of these events. Many Ontario citizens are questioning the safety of any group home, no matter which group it serves. Many people may have lost confidence in the service sector’s ability to deliver effective community-based programs while at the same time protecting the security of those communities.

That confidence must be restored. This government is committed to restoring that confidence. It is committed to delivering services to people in their communities. The reviews I have announced today will now become an essential element in that direction, and I call on all members of this Legislature to work with us.

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RESPONSES

YOUNG OFFENDERS / JEUNES CONTREVENANTS

Mr. B. Rae: This is indeed a very sad day for all of us in the Legislature. It has been a weekend in which we have heard news that has shaken all of us. It has shaken the family and the community in Sault Ste. Marie and the family of Krista Sepp. Krista had been working for a short two weeks after her graduation from a community college program and was killed while working in a group home on Saturday night in Midland. All of our thoughts and our hearts go out to the Sepp family on this occasion, as they do to the families of the young men who were killed in the car accident near Napanee after escaping from a detention centre.

We have many questions about what has taken place. We have many questions about why a young woman was working alone on a Saturday night in a group home. We have many questions about how it is that this could have happened. We want to know how many other people are working in equally difficult circumstances.

I hear what the minister says when he says there has been a loss of confidence, and all of us have to respond to that. I want to say to the minister that there has indeed been a loss of confidence; there has been a loss of confidence in the public and among the workers in group home centres, and indeed by the young people themselves who are in these detention centres, because I do not think the government has done what needs to be done in terms of coming to grips with young offenders, with kids who are in trouble and troubled, with their needs as well as with the needs of the community.

We will have an opportunity, I hope, later on this afternoon to debate at some length the history of this very difficult but vital subject. It is one that has troubled us in our party for a very long time, as the minister will know. I will have some questions for the minister later on in question period about what has happened and what the minister knows.

The laws are supposed to be there to do three things: (1) to protect the public, (2) to protect the workers who are acting on behalf of the public and (3) to do what we can to ensure that kids in need get the kind of care, the kind of attention and the kind of help and assistance that they need.

Those three objectives should not be impossible to arrive at, but I think we have all been reminded how difficult it has proven to meet those three objectives: (1) protecting the public, making sure that the public is secure in the knowledge that the best efforts of government and professionals alike are being directed to their protection, a perfectly legitimate and fundamental basis of a democratic society; (2) that the professionals and other people working be protected themselves and have the protection and support of their government and of their taxpayers as they carry out a very difficult job, and (3) that the kids themselves, many of whom are troubled, who are crying out for help, get the kind of help and attention that they need.

C’est une journée très triste à nos débats. Nous venons de vivre une tragédie, où six enfants si jeunes sont morts : où une jeune femme, qui venait de compléter ses études et de commencer son travail dans un centre pour jeunes, est morte ; où cinq autres sont morts après avoir quitté l’endroit où ils étaient détenus -- si vous voulez -- par l’état.

C’est une tragédie. Nous avons le droit de poser des questions profondes au gouvernement, pour savoir comment cela a pu se passer dans notre province.

Mr. Brandt: I first of all want to join the minister in extending my condolences and sympathies to the families that are so deeply hurt by the loss of six lives that occurred over this past weekend. It is a terrible, terrible sequence of events that led to the loss of these six lives, and I know that it has very deeply and in a very real sense impacted on every member of this Legislative Assembly.

In connection with the statement of the minister, I do want to say that there are a number of questions that my party will have shortly in connection with what occurred. There is very little new information in what the minister has released to us today, and he has indicated that much of the information will in fact develop after a fuller investigation has occurred by his ministry and by the Ontario Provincial Police.

Some of the questions that we have of course surround the situation that occurred in Midland at the group home with Krista Sepp and the very unusual circumstances that would find a young lady, a recent graduate of a community college program, having spent less than two weeks on the job, being found alone in circumstances that I think all of us would agree are at least reasonably dangerous under the best of circumstances.

To have one staff person there, I would suggest to the minister -- and I know that one of the things the minister is going to be looking into is the appropriate levels of staff and the situation that developed resulting in only one staff member being in attendance -- really raises some concerns and questions on our part. We agree with him that has to be looked at very carefully.

I want to say as well that in our party we are prepared to join the government and the minister in pursuit of appropriate changes to the Young Offenders Act, which we believe is in need of changes after some eight years that the act has been in existence. We have been calling for changes which specifically will address questions like sentencing and also questions like the appropriate level of communications with local authorities, such as the police representatives in those areas, in order to make sure that there is in fact a balance between the need we all see to attempt to rehabilitate these young people who have gotten themselves into very difficult circumstances and, on the other hand, the very real need to protect the important interests of the community at large.

There are some of us who believe very strongly that particular balance is not in order at the moment and that revisions and changes as a result of now having some experience with the act are very much in order. As an indication of the direction that our party would like to go, I have today written to the Minister of Justice indicating some specific changes we would like to see occur. I would be more than happy to share those with the minister as well, and hopefully we can find some common ground to move together in an attempt to rectify the kinds of problems that occurred over this past weekend.

Again, I feel badly, as I know the minister does, as to what actually occurred and the circumstances that surrounded that. I just hope that we can work in as nonpartisan a way as possible and in a nonparochial way to try to find some solutions to what are devastating problems, very serious incidents that have to be dealt with in a responsible way and that, hopefully, can be corrected by the collective efforts of the members of this assembly.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr. B. Rae: I have some questions for the Minister of Community and Social Services arising out of the tragic events this last weekend.

The minister in his statement today says, “...we will begin an immediate review of staffing guidelines in facilities housing young offenders.” Can the minister tell us what regulations are now in place under his jurisdiction, under his responsibility, on staffing guidelines? Following that question, I wonder if the minister can explain how it was possible that a young woman, who was so new to the job and so inexperienced, was left alone on a Saturday night, responsible for those under her care in the group home in Midland on Saturday.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: There are two regulations which speak to staffing guidelines. Generally they say that one staff person per eight is the minimum and that one staff person at night, when the others are asleep, is the minimum. In terms of our actual contractual arrangements with community agencies, that is changed if the nature of the residents is other than what would be the norm for the service of that agency.

In this particular situation, the house would normally have four people and two staff. It was down to two residents and one staff. There was some concern a couple of weeks ago in this house, and an extra staff person was put on for a week. When those concerns did not appear to materialize, the staffing ratio was returned to what it was before.

The decision to have this particular young lady on at that time, with her lack of experience, is one we are still questioning ourselves. But in terms of the numbers, the agency was living up to the guidelines which are currently in effect. Because of that experience, I have indicated that obviously those guidelines, those regulations, must be reviewed, because there will be situations where they are not appropriate. Obviously, this is one of them.

Mr. B. Rae: It is my understanding that as a result of internal ministry studies with respect to staffing, with respect to the pay of staff and with respect to the risks in the system because of staffing problems, the Ministry of Community and Social Services in fact applied to the Management Board of Cabinet for an additional $6.8 million as of August 1988, and that request is simply on hold.

I wonder if the minister can tell us, were there any internal studies within his ministry dealing with questions of staffing and staffing guidelines and the pay of staff in groups homes under his jurisdiction; is there in fact a request before Management Board for additional funds and what has happened to that request?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: There was not an internal review in terms of staff numbers, other than, as I say, that it is a question we deal with on an individual basis with agencies, depending upon the particular group of young people they are serving.

There has been a review, and I believe I have responded to that in this House before, with respect to the salary and wages of a number of community groups. Young offenders was one of them. Those dealing with the developmentally handicapped was another. Homemakers was another. Foster parents was another.

We as a ministry, as all ministries are expected to, have shared that information and our recommendations with Management Board. They are under review at present. No final decision has yet been made.

Mr. B. Rae: By way of final supplementary on this round, the minister will no doubt be aware of the coroner’s report signed by Dr. Ross Bennett, who is the chief coroner of Ontario, when Celia Ruygrok died on July 6, 1985. I wonder if the minister can tell us what action was taken by his ministry in response to this particular recommendation from the coroner’s inquest.

Admittedly, the recommendation dealt with a federal institution dealing with parolees from federal penitentiary, but I would like to ask the minister, was this coroner’s jury recommendation considered by the ministry and what was the response?

The recommendation is that “Facility security guidelines be included in the Standards and Guidelines for Community Residential Facilities to address such issues as alarm systems, personal security, staffing and general building security.”

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: When those were drawn to our attention, we understood that they were at the time more concerned about adult offender halfway houses. We had indicated that it would be more appropriate for consideration and review of those particular recommendations within the Ministry of Correctional Services, and the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Ramsay) has in fact responded to those.

Within our own ministry, since we do not operate what could be called halfway houses -- we have open-custody facilities and we have secure-custody facilities -- we have very firm term dispositions from the courts that we are bound to live up to, other than going back to the court and asking it to review that decision.

As I indicated earlier we do, however, have staffing guidelines. We do have call arrangements within the various facilities so that if there is a need for more staff to be brought on, there is in fact a communications arrangement to do that. We do that directly through our transfer payment agencies. We do it through our children’s aid societies, which in fact relate to the transfer payment agencies.

That is as far as we have gone at this present time, other than the review which I have already announced.

Mr. Speaker: New question; the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. B. Rae: I was going to address this question to the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara), but he is not here, so I want to address it to the Minister of Community and Social Services.

The minister may not be as familiar with the Occupational Health and Safety Act as his colleague the Minister of Labour, but the minister will no doubt perhaps be aware that under the Occupational Health and Safety Act a number of things are supposed to happen.

When a death occurs in a workplace -- and the Midland group home is a workplace -- the director in the Ministry of Labour is supposed to be informed within 48 hours and an immediate inspection is supposed to take place to find out whether there has been a contravention, a breach, a breaking of the act in any way.

Section 14 of the act says it is the obligation of every employer to “take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker.” I wonder if the minister can tell us, does he feel confident -- and I will repeat the act’s wording, “every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker” -- that every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of Krista Sepp had in fact been taken by the employer in this case?

Hon Mr. Sweeney: It is much easier to make those decisions in hindsight than it is to make them before. However, let me share with my honourable colleagues what in fact we knew before.

There were two residents in this facility. Each of them had a very disturbed history, but during the period of time that they were actually in the residence, all of the professional attention that they were given indicated that they were not a serious threat. The young girl, for example, who had previously been at Cecil Facer Youth Centre and was moved to this residence, had been there for over four months and had not indicated during those four months that she was going to act in any violent or aggressive way.

What I am trying to say is that, based upon the information that was available prior to this incident, there was no reason to believe that there was a serious threat to the young counsellor.

I would also point out that a few weeks ago when there was an apparent threat, Kinark Child and Family Services did double the staffing for a period of approximately a week to respond to that apparent threat. When nothing resulted, the extra staff person was taken off.

In response to the question, I guess all I can say is that given what we knew at the time, the answer would be no; given what we know now, the answer obviously would be very different.

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Mr. B. Rae: The minister is being very cryptic, if I may say so, in terms of his answers. I know he is in some sense bound by the law, as are we all, in terms of charges being laid and so on, and we are not able to comment on information. The hard fact remains that a young woman is dead and that she was placed in charge of a group home where there had apparently been some signs of a problem a couple of weeks before, according to what the minister has just told us. That led to an additional staff person being there for a week and then the additional staff person being taken off. Why? Because they did not have enough money? Because they decided they would rather not spend the money on that? For what reason, the minister has not told us.

The Sepp family and everybody are entitled to more answers than the ones we are getting from the minister. I have asked the minister very specifically, does he feel every precaution was taken that would protect a worker? She was working on this job. This is her job. She cannot refuse to do this job --

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. B. Rae: -- because of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. She is not covered by it. She has no choice. The only protection she has is the sense that the government and her employer are there behind her.

I am asking the minister, is he satisfied that there are no Krista Sepps out there tonight who are going to be working alone in some conditions of risk and danger simply because either the money is not there, or the guidelines are not there or the simple political will is not there to see we do this job properly?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member very correctly observed that I am somewhat restricted by the fact there is an investigation and a charge has been laid against two people. I cannot speak in any way whatsoever that would direct attention either towards or away from the investigation that follows that charge. Quite frankly, there are many things about the incident itself that I honestly do not know. That has not been shared with us.

As I am sure the honourable member will be aware, the police contacted both Kinark and ourselves and said in effect that they were responsible for the investigation and we had to be very careful how we participated in it. The best information we have is that there was no apparent danger from the two residents within the house. The caution was with someone else outside of the house -- I do not know all the details yet, other than what has been reported in the press -- and it was for that reason the extra staff person was put on, not because of the potential danger from within the house but rather from without.

Mr. B. Rae: This question of morale and the question of access to homes and so on has been raised many times in this House. It was raised most recently on February 1 by my colleague the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan).

In light of what the minister has told us and in light of the fact it may well be that one of the problems is the ministry’s own lack of political leadership on this issue, the government’s own failure to deal with the question of proper funding and to develop staff guidelines when asked to do so by many others in the field, would the minister not agree that rather than having an internal review conducted by many of the same officials who have been supervising this field and who have been advising the minister for so many years, we would all be better off to have a full, open, public inquiry that would deal directly not only with what has taken place, but frankly with the responsibility of government and governments for the problem that is out there and that has so obviously contributed to the problems we are experiencing now?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: As the honourable member knows, there is a police investigation going on right at this time. I indicated to him that from an internal point of view, there are three different sources. It is not just our ministry: Our ministry is included, the Ministry of Correctional Services is included and the Ontario Provincial Police is included. All those have knowledge and experience in this field, which I believe we have a responsibility to tap into to try to get the answers we want.

I point out to the honourable member with respect to the government’s financial contributions that the budget for Kinark Child and Family Services was substantially increased over the past two years by approximately $2 million, including $500,000 with respect to program changes.

The second point I draw to his attention is that the staff salary ranges at Kinark are twofold. The first range is from $19,900 to $26,000. The second range is from $26,000 to $32,000. We can all question whether that is enough, but it certainly does indicate the range in which salaries are being paid to those employees for providing that service.

Mr. Brandt: My question is to the same minister. During the estimates of July 1986, the minister indicated it was his ministry that convinced judges to send young offenders to community-based programs in open, as opposed to secure, settings. I believe at that time it was reasonably well known this was something judges were reluctant to do. In those particular estimates the minister stated, “The judges were very concerned about the capability of the ministry to deliver.”

During the same estimates period in July 1986, one of his officials stated that he would have guidelines in place for programs dealing with young offenders and their placement in the community. My question to the minister is, when were those guidelines established, how widely were they circulated, and how often would the ministry review privately run homes to ensure that those guidelines were being followed?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: My recollection of the 1986 estimates the honourable member refers to was in response, I believe -- the member can correct me if I am wrong -- to a question being raised as to why so many more young offenders were now being placed in open custody, rather than secure custody as they had been earlier.

My response was that under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, the courts and the judges simply did not have the authority to place them directly in open custody. What they did under that act was to sentence a young person to a training school for an unlimited period of time, and it was then at the discretion and the judgement of my ministry officials to keep him in that training school for however long, and then transfer him to a community setting for the balance of the time.

Under the Young Offenders Act, there is a significant change, and that is that the judges now make a specific disposition, either to secure custody or to open custody, and they make it for a specific period of time. I was saying that because of that change in the authority given to the judges, many more of them were placing young people in open custody, simply because they felt that was the most appropriate place for them to put them.

I then went on to say that this imposed upon us as a ministry the responsibility to have available all of the necessary open custody spaces to which judges would send young people. We had no discretion there. We simply had to provide it.

Mr. Brandt: There is at least one point of agreement generally throughout this House, and that is that after eight or nine years the Young Offenders Act must be updated to reflect the realities of today as well as the experience we have gained over that period of time.

In light of the fact there are some disagreements, to put it mildly, between the federal and the provincial government in connection with funding and certain specific areas in connection with the Young Offenders Act, is the minister prepared to take a look at the complete total act as it impacts on Ontario by way of a public inquiry? Under those circumstances, this inquiry will not, as the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae) has already stated, involve those people who are necessarily closest to the situation itself, but will open the whole matter up for the public to take a look at this particular act and the way in which it might be modified or changed, or at the problems that are inherent in the act as it stands now.

What I am asking is, will his ministry agree to a public inquiry?

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Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member is perhaps well aware of the fact that the act was passed in the federal House in 1982, I believe. It was not implemented in Ontario until 1984. One of the reasons was the one the member raised, and that is some dispute between the federal and the provincial government as to who was going to pay for the added expenses that would naturally flow from the expanded service. In 1984, I presume that was resolved to the best will of the two levels of government and we now have essentially that in place.

The honourable member will perhaps also be aware of the fact that both the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) and myself had indicated to the federal Minister of Justice from 1985 on that there needed to be some changes made. In 1986, in fact, some changes were made. One the member will perhaps recall was the ability of the police to release the name of a young offender under certain circumstances; there were other changes but that was one of them.

During that time and since, the Attorney General has on a number of occasions advocated further changes, and I believe he is not the only Attorney General in Canada to do so. I indicated in my statement today that as of today a letter has gone to the Honourable Doug Lewis, once again from our Attorney General and I support this letter, requesting that all of the attorneys general, federal and provincial, sit down together and make the kind of review the member has indicated himself.

We believe it is important for our Ministry of Correctional Services and for our police forces --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Mr. Brandt: The minister is quite correct in that the act was proclaimed in Ontario in 1984. Since that time, there have been various requests from judges, from those in law enforcement and from elected officials, asking for some changes to the act in order to reflect some of the problems that have been identified.

In November 1988, the Attorney General wrote to the then Minister of Justice requesting some changes to the Young Offenders Act, as I believe was the case and I think the minister indicated this in his statement today. The minister has again written to the newly appointed Minister of Justice pointing out some of the provincial difficulties and problems, I would presume, and asking for a complete review on a Canada-wide basis involving all the ministries of justice in all provinces and the federal government.

Since the minister is not prepared to commit to a full and total inquiry as to what is going on with respect to the actual administration of the act, is the minister prepared to indicate the position of his government with respect to the changes he wants to see occur and which he is in the process of negotiating with the federal government, starting with his letter of November 1988 and coming up to date with the letter he has just sent as a result of the tragic weekend we have experienced in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: There are a number of areas, but there are three we have drawn to the attention of this Legislature on a number of occasions.

The first one deals with the whole question of communication, in which I indicated there has been a partial change: But to whom may we communicate information and under what circumstances? We feel at the present time that even though there is a section within the act that gives us some discretion, it is fairly tightly constrained and we need a clearer understanding, and I would suggest it has to be similar across the country.

The second one was with respect to a number of challenges judges have indicated in terms of who goes where. I think the honourable member is well aware of the fact there were two or three provincial court judges who clearly said they disagreed with the kinds of dispositions they were allowed to make and who in fact were withholding making any decisions at all until they had been reserved by a higher court. We want that checked.

The third one, and the one to which the Attorney General has spoken on a number of occasions, is the three-year limitation on serious offences. Flowing from that would be a review of how, when and under what circumstances a young offender would be transferred to an adult court as opposed to staying in a juvenile court.

CHILD CARE

Mrs. Cunningham: My question is also for the Minister of Community and Social Services. As the minister is aware, we have program advisers who license and also review licences of our child care centres. The fact is that the resources are simply not available to follow through with a great many of the recommendations of his limited staff who are even able to carry out the licensing reviews.

The minister has known of the weaknesses in the investigation practices. In fact, for the last two years there has been an ongoing review of the program advisers’ role, workload and function. We know the inspection and enforcement practices in centres throughout the province are inconsistent and often ineffective. Many centres do not and cannot comply with current legislation.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mrs. Cunningham: Would the minister advise the House that he will move to address these problems as quickly as possible?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member will recall that I brought into the House, I believe it was about two weeks ago, the parent poster that is going to be put into all our 2,500 day care centres. The six-month pilot program associated with that had brought to our attention a number of inspection-monitoring procedures that we were not totally pleased with.

In addition to putting the poster up, we were also immediately launching a complete review of our inspection and monitoring procedures. I can add today that two full-time people have been seconded from the ministry to specifically do that job. When we have that information, I think I can reasonably assure the honourable member that changes will be made.

Mrs. Cunningham: The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care held a press conference today outlining a number of recommendations for immediately improving quality inspection in our day care centres. Their first recommendation, with regard to the minister’s recently announced review of inspection which he just talked about, is that the minister table in the Legislature within 90 days an interim report outlining the progress of the review and issue a fully revised inspection and enforcement procedure within six months.

Any new procedures must address the workload, role and function of the program advisers. Will the minister state in the House today that he will keep this Legislature informed of the progress of the review by tabling within 90 days a report that will include specific recommendations for improvements to the inspection and enforcement procedures within six months?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I am quite prepared to share with my honourable colleagues, and I think I have demonstrated that in the past, any information I have. I am not certain whether I can make the 90-day commitment; I will certainly attempt to do so. I am as interested in getting the information as soon as the honourable member is, and when I have it will share it with her.

However, I would point out to her, as I shared with her in the estimates debate just this past week, that one of the difficulties we are facing is that the 52 inspectors or program consultants we have across the province also have other tasks. She is well aware that the pressure in communities to provide more subsidies and licensed spaces, to allocate the direct grants and to work with workplace day care opportunities, takes a certain amount of their time as well.

The decision I am being asked to make now, and that is my decision and I accept responsibility for it, is to balance the amount of time those program consultants, who are certainly working long, full days, should be spending on the inspection side as opposed to the amount of time they should be spending on the program implementation side.

The obvious solution would simply be to have more people; however, the honourable member is well aware of the kinds of pressure and criticism I am under when I want to put more people in the field to do these kinds of things.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: In response, we will give the member the information as soon as we have it.

Mrs. Cunningham: I am happy to hear the minister will at least try to meet that 90-day commitment, because I think it is a reasonable request.

One of the great concerns we have in Ontario right now is that this government has studied the system to death. The professionals in the field are very much aware of what should happen. We all know part of the problem is how people spend their time. We know that when the minister is doing his work, he will find there is a way of spending one’s time more efficiently. However, we are looking at a time frame for the province right now. We do not want the parents of the children to have to wait much longer for the kinds of recommendations and serious changes to legislation than they already have.

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If the minister could come up with an interim report in 90 days, we are looking very clearly at a time frame of not more than six months before we have some very specific recommendations on legislation to do with the inspections. My next question would be: Can the minister meet the time frame of no longer than six months for specific guidelines’?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I would accept the premise that the six-month period, let’s say roughly the end of June or July, seems appropriate at this time. I must say that as we are still determining with the two full-time people we have seconded to do this job what the nature of their task is and how much they are going to be able to rely upon others -- I think it is a reasonable request and I will genuinely try to meet it.

Mr. B. Rae: I want to continue this line of questioning to the minister with respect to child care centres. In April 1987, the minister is quoted in an interview with the Globe and Mail. At that time the select committee on health, when it was studying child care had access to information on the inadequacy of inspections and on problems of care, particularly in commercial centres.

The minister was quoted in the Globe and Mail at that time as saying: “Sometimes we have to pull back our spurs a little bit so that we won’t be closing places down.” He was referring to the inspection process and how it was not working. Can the minister tell us if that is still the position of the ministry with respect to inspections?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: With respect to any day care centre where there is an obvious danger to the health of children and the safety of children, we certainly would not hesitate to close it down as quickly as we possibly could. As a matter of fact, in the past year approximately 12 centres have closed down, most of them of their own decision because we had indicated to them, “Either you do it or we’ll do it.” Nevertheless, there were approximately 12.

However, if I can go back to the particular comment the member referred to, I said at that time and I would have to repeat that the job of our inspectors is not to find places they want to close down but rather to find places where the act is not being enforced the way it ought to be and to assist the operator and the staff of those centres to change their procedures so they can come into compliance, and we are prepared to work with them as much as we possibly can to get them into compliance.

I do not need to tell the honourable member that the desperate need for more spaces in the province leads us to try to retain the places we have, provided we are assured that the safety and health of children is not seriously at risk. That is still the direction of my ministry, but we have not hesitated to close down a centre or to compel it to close down on its own where there are genuine health and safety risks.

Mr. B. Rae: The minister’s own inspectors have found that about one in seven of the homes they inspected are unclean or potentially unsafe and that over one in five fail to keep basic records. This is a ramshackle system where commercial operators, by and large, are operating in far greater violation of the regulations than nonprofit operations. The minister has known that ever since he became the Minister of Community and Social Services.

Can the minister tell us why he has failed up until now to provide a system which does not put inspectors in this impossible situation of saying, “If I enforce the law I’m in fact going to be depriving dozens of kids and their families of appropriate and necessary child care, child care they need”? Does he not see the need for a comprehensive system which will stop putting inspectors into this impossible situation?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: In response to the honourable member, we can clearly say that that is what we have been doing for the last, roughly three and a half years. We recognize that the only way we are going to keep our inspectors out of that dilemma, as he puts it and accurately puts it, is to have as many more spaces as possible available to families and available to parents. By doubling our subsidized spaces, by adding 25,000 licensed spaces, by including the direct grants for roughly $60 million in 1988 alone, by pretty close to quadrupling the total budget for it, we are moving in that direction.

It is only at a point in time where we have enough alternative choices for parents in place that we can be stricter than we are at the present time. I am not suggesting that we would not close down a place where there is a serious safety or health violation. We will and we have and we do; but we will try to keep as many spaces available for parents as long as we can, and at the very same time put more and more spaces in place. The honourable member knows, with reference to nonprofit and commercial, that all of the new spaces I have been talking about --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. New question, the member for Parry Sound.

OUTBREAK OF MENINGITIS

Mr. Eves: In the absence of the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan), her parliamentary assistant, the member for Kingston and The Islands (Mr. Keyes), the Premier (Mr. Peterson), the Deputy Premier (Mr. R. F. Nixon) and just about anybody else in cabinet who would know anything about health care over there, I will ask a question of the government House leader. I am sure that if he is not up to date on this important issue, he will refer it to the cabinet minister who is running the health care system in Ontario today.

Could the minister give us an explanation of how it was that a 10-year-old student at Grandview Public School in the Peterborough area died of meningitis several days after four of her classmates had contracted the disease and how it was that it took about a week for the district health unit to recognize this serious problem?

Hon. Mr. Conway: I thank the honourable member for his question. It is my understanding that both the Ministry of Health and the relevant health authorities in the Peterborough-Lindsay area did act both prudently and correctly. This particular meningitis is one that requires an antidote that has to be administered under very particular circumstances. It is my understanding, on the basis of the information that I have, that that antidote was administered quite properly.

It is, of course, very tragic that the young person died; but again, it is my information that the relevant health authorities acted prudently and took the necessary action by administering the antidote as it is medically required to be so administered.

Mr. Eves: I am sure that the Kaufholds would beg to disagree with the government House leader that appropriate action was taken and that it was taken quickly and properly. Perhaps the minister could give an explanation to the House as to why it took a week for the district health unit to respond to this situation.

There were seven cases reported within a week from one Friday, January 27, I believe, until the following Friday. It was only on the second Friday that Dr. Mikel acknowledged that he had an outbreak of meningitis. In the meantime, there were some seven cases reported. What steps is this government taking to ensure that this does not happen again, and will the minister give us an explanation in the House as to how this was allowed to occur?

Hon. Mr. Conway: Let me say to my honourable friend, let me repeat that I share the concern that he has. I would say to the family that the tragedy is indeed that: it is a tragedy. But it is my information that the meningitis in question is treated with an antidote, but it must be established that there is an interrelationship between the various individuals. When that is done, the antidote is administered.

I repeat that it is my information that the medical authorities did act appropriately in this circumstance. I repeat that it is none the less tragic that an individual died, but I understand that for the meningitis involved, the proper antidote was administered in a prudent way.

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CROP INSURANCE

Mr. Owen: I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture and Food. In my riding, there are a number of farmers who are part of the crop insurance program and they support it fully. I have other farmers who are not. Notwithstanding repeated requests to discuss it further, they have still remained out of the program.

I understand that the Minister of Agriculture and Food has had a number of recommendations where it was proposed that improvements could be made and we could attract more farmers into the program, and I understand that the minister is contemplating some of those changes to make it more attractive to these farmers who are still not in the program. I wonder if the minister could share with us today what some of the changes are that might be contemplated and how we can make it more attractive to bring into the program the farmers who are not there now.

Hon. Mr. Riddell: The member for Simcoe Centre is no doubt aware that a task force was commissioned a couple of years ago to review the crop insurance program and to make recommendations for changes that would encourage more producers to participate in the program.

The task force made, I believe, 22 recommendations and most of the recommendations which fall within provincial jurisdiction were incorporated into our crop insurance program. One of the major recommendations made was that coverage over 80 per cent be considered. I understand that the federal government, being that the act is a federal act, now has the Crop Insurance Act under review and I am sure one of the things that it is reviewing is the coverage of 80 per cent. If they do choose to amend the act, then they will have to go into the federal House in order to get coverage over the 80 per cent.

One of the things we are doing here at the provincial level is including a floating price option for the major grain crops to ensure that the price at which the crop is insured is close to the market price at harvest time. The commission is also introducing crop insurance -- and this will be for the first time -- for greenhouse production of tomatoes and cucumbers. Coverage for these products is based on 80 per cent of the greenhouse operator’s own average farm yield. These are in addition to many of the other recommendations we have already incorporated into the crop insurance program

Mr. Owen: We are heading into a new crop year and one of the biggest requests I have had from the farmers in my area is to allow for increased premium assistance. Has the federal government given any indication to our province as to whether or not something will be in place to help the farmers for the crop year they are heading into this year?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I had occasion to meet with Donald Mazankowski, the federal minister, two weeks ago. We had a two-hour session and raised a number of issues. We found common ground on a lot of the issues. I really look forward to working with Mr. Mazankowski; I think he is sincere about doing a job for agriculture and food.

He indicated that the Crop Insurance Act is under review, and I received more or less a favourable response from him that he was prepared to amend the Crop Insurance Act to allow coverage over the 80 per cent, which is the thing that the farmers are most concerned about.

I am sure we will also see a change in the premium structure. I have always indicated that I am prepared to pick up a portion of the producers’ premium. I was hoping that the federal government would leave its contribution at the 50 per cent level, but I do not know what Mr. Mazankowski will come up with. Whatever he does, I am sure that it will favour the producers.

PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION PLANS

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I have a question for the Minister of Financial Institutions. I ask this question because of my concern but also, as the minister will be aware, because there is a large number of people from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union here today. They would like to hear the minister’s justification for rejecting joint trusteeship of their pension plan, as well as how the minister can continue to justify the specific inability, under the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, for them to be able to negotiate their pension benefits. Why does the government of Ontario continue to take this paternalistic view towards its employees?

Hon. Mr. Elston: In Ontario, we have programs in place which are designed to ensure that the employees are protected in the workplace and which do all kinds of things that are new and novel, and we wish to become an even more model employer. That was one of the reasons -- there were several -- for us sitting down with OPSEU to discuss a whole new way of dealing with the pension issue.

I can tell the honourable member that I was disappointed when I found the union taking leave from the discussions surrounding pensions which we had with it, as I had indicated my willingness to retain a very open mind about the manner in which we dealt with pensions in Ontario. In fact, I am still willing to sit at the table and discuss these things and will look forward to the days when we talk again about pension issues, of whichever nature the union would like us to speak to.

Mr. Pouliot: You won’t even give them a list of investments.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: The government rejects the ability for the members of the pension plan to be able to have any decision-making influence on where their pension funds are being invested and how that has happened over the years. As well, the government refuses to allow them to negotiate their pension plan benefits when their contract is being negotiated. That is the question. How does the minister justify that attitude toward his own employees?

Hon. Mr. Elston: As I had tried to tell the honourable gentleman, in my role as Chairman of Management Board and in charge of the human resources secretariat, we deal with issues of pensions with respect to the Ontario public service. I have a very open mind with respect to how we deal with pensions in this day and age. I was disappointed, as I said before, that the union chose to leave the table. I welcome the discussions to continue.

Any way we can restructure pensions in a reasonable and liberal fashion is, in my view, an assistance. From my point of view, the people of the province would be well served if we were able to come to some agreeable resolution of our discussions, and I am quite open to that.

Mr. B. Rae: It’s the liberalism we’re worried about, Murray.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I can tell that the honourable members across the way do not like the idea that we have new ways of dealing with the issues of pension and other things that we want to discuss with our employees.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Order.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I am quite prepared to do that. I will continue to work to make the workplace in the Ontario public service sector a very good one to participate in and I will continue to deal with the issue of pensions in a very progressive fashion. I look forward to continuing discussions with the public service.

Mr. Speaker: New question. The member for Nipissing.

Mr. Harris: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I never thought I would have to rely on the current minister to make Conservatives look good in the matter of negotiations with our employees.

Mr. Speaker: The question is for which minister?

DEVELOPMENTALLY HANDICAPPED

Mr. Harris: I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services regarding local associations for the mentally retarded in Ontario. Concerns about staff shortages focus on the lack of ministry planning with respect to deinstitutionalization policy and the ministry’s failure to promote the profession. The real problem now centres on wages, resulting from ministry transfer payments.

The minister knows about these concerns. We discussed them briefly in the few moments available to me in estimates last week. He also knows that only his ministry can address them. What is he doing now to address them and what steps is he taking to ensure continued delivery of this vital service in the community by the associations of the mentally retarded?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: We have indicated in our document Challenges and Opportunities that we accept the responsibility for providing community support services for the families of the developmentally handicapped who already live in the community. As a matter of fact, we have made a commitment over a seven-year period, from the release of that document, to provide services to 8,000 more families than we are now providing for, which I believe is about 25,000.

We also indicated that we would continue to support families to move their, in most cases adult children, out of institutions and back to the community. We made a commitment for 1,000 from institutions and 1,000 from nursing homes. We know, as do the community agencies, that is only going to be successful if we have a community support system in place that everyone can work with. That means residential services, day services and training services. It also means staff who are trained to do the job and who are paid to do the job that is required of them.

That follows a question I answered earlier from the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae). Part of the total community wage package is now being considered by the government.

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Mr. Harris: The cold, hard facts are that a counsellor working for the ministry earns about $26,000 per year. A counsellor working and doing the same job for a local transfer agency that the minister is counting on to deliver his program makes about $18,000.

The ministry is forcing local agencies to compete, but they cannot do it if they are limited to a four per cent transfer payment increase. At the same time, the ministry is forcing local agencies to do more and more in terms of delivering services that it expects them to deliver.

The minister knows there is going to be a strike. He knows he is going to have to provide the resources to settle the strike, either with salary dollars or with advice on what it is that he expects them to provide that they should no longer provide, what services they are going to have to cut.

Mr. Speaker: The question?

Mr. Harris: I would ask the minister to save the agencies, their clients and their families a lot of grief by acting now instead of when the strike takes place. What is he doing now to resolve this problem instead of waiting until that time?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: One of the things we are doing, obviously, as I indicated, is reviewing our whole community salary package, and the extent to which we can improve it will be the extent to which we will certainly share it with the local communities.

The second thing we are doing is working with not only the agency in North Bay but many other communities across the province that are facing similar concerns and making sure that the service to the clients will continue if there is a work stoppage and looking at the range of programs which those agencies are providing and jointly asking ourselves whether or not we want to rearrange the order of priority of those particular programs.

As the member obviously knows, the desire of every local agency is to provide as much support and as many services as it possibly can. The budget that is available to it does not always allow it to do everything that it wants to do. Consequently, they have to review that, we have to review that; and we are doing it jointly. That is the process that is going on right now.

ONTARIO TRAVEL ASSOCIATION PROGRAM

Mr. Black: My question is for the Minister of Tourism and Recreation. I understand that the Ontario travel association program, which provides funding for tourist promotion across the province, is currently under review. Can the minister identify for us the status of that review and the time lines under which it is being conducted?

Hon Mr. O’Neil: I would like to thank the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay for his question, especially since he represents an area that is so important to tourism in Ontario. I can tell him that there is a review going on of the Ontario travel association program. That review started in the fall of 1988 and we are hoping that we will have the recommendations published some time before this summer.

Mr. Black: The minister is aware of the fact that my riding is in the Georgian Lakelands tourism area and that that tourism area represents three quite diverse sections of the province in terms of tourism development. He is also aware of the fact that there have been some concerns coming from those three diverse sections about whether one umbrella organization can effectively represent their views and their needs. Will there be an opportunity for those three areas to make their views known under this review?

Hon. Mr. O’Neil: I can assure the member that there will be consideration made so that all of those three areas will be heard. In each case, the review that is taking place includes, actually, three phases. There will be questionnaires, there will be telephone interviews and there will be meetings with all of the focus groups. In each of these consultations, we will be listening to representatives from the tourism industry, from municipalities, from the local tourist associations and also from the 12 existing OTAP organizations that are spread around the province.

I can assure the member that my staff and myself are prepared to listen to all of the different groups -- any that he would recommend -- and we will, hopefully, meet with all of the people concerned with tourism in that area and throughout the rest of the province.

PLANT CLOSURES

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. The closing of the Lundy Steel plant in Dunnville, with a loss of 170 jobs, was announced with a half hour’s notice to the workers involved and no look at the books. Does the minister consider this appropriate and good corporate citizenship?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I am sure the member will know that Ivaco, the company that is the parent, has been rationalizing its industries and that this is not the only plant. We deplore any time any workers are put out of work. I should tell the member that we have very little control other than to make sure that the provisions under the labour legislation are followed. We will certainly see, through the Ministry of Labour, that those are followed.

Mr. Mackenzie: The minister has given part of the supplementary. This is not the first time that Ivaco has closed down a plant. As a matter of fact, it is at least the third plant I know of that they have closed in the name of rationalization. There was the Canron subsidiary in London, the Automotive Hardware/Federal Bolt and Nut operation in Toronto and now Lundy Steel. In each case, there were no discussions with the workers or the unions before the announcement was made, no explanation given for the decision and no hope given that anything might be reversed.

Why is it that this government seems to be the easiest patsy in the western world when it comes to companies closing down plants where workers are adversely affected? Why is it this government has not lived up to its promise -- which would deal exactly with this -- for there to be some justification, some earlier notice and plant closure procedures in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: The member will know that there is nothing that we can do to compel a company to stay open if it decides it is going to close down. What we can do is make sure that the workers are adequately treated. That is something we have provisions for in the labour code and we will be pursuing that.

COMMUNITY SAFETY

Mr. Runciman: In the absence of the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan), I will direct a question to the Solicitor General that has to do with individuals out in the communities on loosened Lieutenant Governor’s warrants.

The Solicitor General will know that her colleagues on the standing committee on public accounts last week rejected a call from our party to have an efficiency audit done of the risk management system in place at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital after an incident there a couple of weeks ago.

Following that rejection, on Thursday evening we had an escape from ward K, the forensic unit of the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital, of an individual who was responsible for some very serious violent crimes in the Toronto area a few years ago. That was his third elopement, as the hospital likes to describe it, in a month and a half.

As the minister responsible for policing, does she have any concerns that she may want to inform the House of with respect to the problems these individuals are creating for police forces right across this province?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I recognize that the member has much concern for the people in his community because of these elopements from the institution, but I think he should be aware that they represent a very small minority of the people involved and that indeed many controls are being put in place.

As the Minister of Health has assured him in the past, they are looking very closely at this now to make sure that in considering the treatment and freedom given to anyone on a warrant, they will first take into consideration the safety of the citizenship generally. On the other hand, when people act outside what is permitted to them, that creates a different circumstance.

Mr. Runciman: I do not think the minister is keeping on top of what exactly is happening in that system. In the Brockville incident, the staff at the hospital were notified that this individual had been drinking three days prior to the incident occurring. They were very much aware that he was extremely dangerous when drinking. When he disappeared in the community, the police were not notified until an hour and a half after his arrest.

I think the minister has to appreciate the concerns being expressed by the policing community, let alone the public at large, with respect to these individuals being out in the community with their activities not being monitored adequately at all.

Talking about the number of incidents, I suggested on Thursday that perhaps the only way we are going to jar the Minister of Health and this government into action is if we end up with a murder on our hands. I hope that is not the approach the minister will support, and I hope she will urge her colleague the Minister of Health and the other members of the public accounts committee to support a public inquiry at best, and if we cannot get that at least an efficiency audit of the risk management system in the psychiatric hospitals across this province.

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Hon. Mrs. Smith: Indeed, the Minister of Health has been looking very closely at this and has put into place instructions that a very careful look be taken at public safety, which is the first consideration in allowing these people out or in giving them any freedom whatsoever.

As the member knows, as a person is recovering and is making progress, it is logical that some degree of freedom would be allowed as he or she recovers. Many people do recover and indeed are subsequently returned to society. However, every care will be taken to make sure that only appropriate people are so released and that in looking at these cases the prime consideration will be for the security of the outside society to which they are being returned.

PETITIONS

RENT REGULATION

Mr. Kanter: I have a petition signed by approximately 120 residents at 103 Avenue Rd. Just before I read the petition I want to indicate to all members it is totally unsolicited. The petition reads:

“We, the tenants of 103 Avenue Rd., strongly support the current rent regulation in Ontario. The increasing pressure from landlords and the media to make rent review obsolete is unacceptable. We want government action to prevent unlimited rent increases and the resulting economic hardships of deregulation.”

Mr. Speaker, I have signed my name to the petition and would now present it to you.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. Fleet: I have a petition from 67 members of Windermere United Church. It is addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“We wish to express our objection to any expansion of Sunday shopping within our community and our province. We urge our elected representatives to continue present restrictions on Sunday store hours as a realistic means of promoting community wellbeing and family togetherness through the encouragement of a common day for rest and refreshment.

“We urge the provincial government to retain its responsibility under the Retail Business Holidays Act and not pass this on to the municipalities.”

I have signed this, in accordance with the rules of the Legislature, as the member for High Park-Swansea.

ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH

Mr. Wildman: I have a petition signed by 16 residents of Wiarton and Owen Sound. It is addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario to pass into law a bill prohibiting the use of animals in cosmetic and product testing.”

As the members know, this brings to more than 30,000 the number of names submitted on such petitions.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT

Mr. Elliot from the standing committee on general government reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amounts and to defray the expenses of the Ministry of Labour be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1989:

Ministry administration program, $26,077,000; industrial relations program, $12,144,200; labour relations board program, $7,607,300; occupational health and safety program, $53,092,300; employment standards program, $9,526,000; workers’ compensation advisory program, $7,381,000; Pay Equity Commission program, $4,226,500.

STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Neumann from the standing committee on social development reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amounts and to defray the expenses of the Ministry of Community and Social Services be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1989:

Ministry administration program, $40,622,000; adults’ and children’s services program, $4,223,220,200.

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

LANDLORD AND TENANT AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Philip moved first reading of Bill 214, An Act to amend the Landlord and Tenant Act.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Philip: The purpose of this bill is to make void any provision in a tenancy agreement prohibiting a tenant from keeping a pet in a rented residential premise. An exception is provided in the case of a rental accommodation of a condominium unit, if the declaration for that condominium corporation prohibits owners from keeping pets.

MOTION TO SET ASIDE ORDINARY BUSINESS

Mr. Allen moved that pursuant to standing order 37(a), the ordinary business of the House be set aside Monday, February 6, 1989, to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, that being the underfunding and lack of planning of programs and facilities for young offenders in Ontario and the resulting lack of public confidence in the current systems of care in control of these young offenders.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Hamilton West has moved that the business be set aside to discuss a matter of urgent public importance. For the information of the members of the House, this notice was received within the proper time and therefore seems to be in order. I will listen to the honourable member for up to five minutes as well as representatives of the other parties for up to five minutes.

Mr. Allen: The circumstances of the death of Krista Sepp at the Kinark Child and Family Services home in Midland are an issue that I think has shaken many people in this province. It is quite evident to those of us who have our ear tuned to the media, those who are reading the press, those who are watching the televisions sets, that the media and, I think one would have to say, the public at large are desperately concerned about what is happening with respect to group homes, residences of open custody, treatment of young offenders and those with whom they are housed in those institutions.

We have been trying on this side of the House for some time to convey to the minister our urgent sense of the inadequacy of the funding of a whole range of transfer agencies that get money from the ministry. This is just the latest in a series of examples.

I suggest there has been an intersection of two things that makes this a crisis. One is the level and rate of violence, which appears to be rising in our society. Certainly the unionized workers of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the Canadian Union of Public Employees who work in these agencies have been pressing the ministry for some time with the fact that they are confronted with a rather new clientele that is much more difficult for them to handle, that the guidelines and understandings that have developed around those institutions are inadequate and yet they have received no response from the ministry with respect to their concerns.

Second, the ministry’s transfer moneys do not provide these institutions and agencies with sufficient resources to carry out their job adequately. In group homes, 50 per cent of the staff are on probation. Recruitment is difficult, pay is poor and staff turnover is high. As a result, these agencies are tempted to reduce their staff, cut back at the slightest provocation and run on minimal resources.

That is the background explanation as to why, when occasionally they do put an additional person on when threats are received, as in the case of the Kinark home, they very quickly go off that additional staff allocation and one is left again, on low times and at night, with simply one person in place.

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It is equally an emergency when, given these circumstances, it is possible for group home managers to place a young person who is barely into the profession and who is barely trained in the profession in solitary control of any group home that houses emotionally disturbed children or young offenders. The consequences are obviously blazoned before us, the result of that absence of policy, of precautionary guidelines in that circumstance.

There are many people who believe that even under such guidelines as exist, where managers are prepared to place new, young and untrained or very recently trained staff in those circumstances in such places of jeopardy, perhaps they should be subject to charges of criminal negligence because the results are obviously very criminal in their consequences.

The whole question of the health and safety of workers in these locations, combined with the necessity of having intelligent, rational, well-supported care for young offenders and those in their teens who are emotionally disturbed in these home situations, has obviously become a matter of very critical and emergency concern for our province.

We remember, for example, when the police not many years ago had to fight very hard to get pairing on their beats in order to protect themselves. It would appear that in group homes it is also necessary never to have anything less than pairing.

There is a whole series of questions we wish the minister to answer this afternoon. He may not be able to answer all of them, but we feel the public is entitled to a full and clear debate in the light of these circumstances at Kinark Child and Family Services and in the light of other recent events that have a tragic similarity to those events so recently past in our own province.

I urge the members of this House and the other parties to accede to an emergency debate on this question forthwith.

Mrs. Cunningham: It gives me some amount of pleasure to speak to this motion this afternoon because we too in the Progressive Conservative Party feel this is a matter of urgent public importance.

Mr. Speaker: We are not speaking to the motion; we are speaking about whether we should speak to the motion eventually.

Mrs. Cunningham: We will do it both ways, then.

I will speak to the fact that we need a public debate on the motion, for these reasons: Everyone agrees there ought to be changes to the Young Offenders Act. We hear it in this House. We hear it from the public. We hear it in the workplace. Those of us who work with young people know it. Everyone also agrees that it was appropriate for the minister concerned to write to the federal minister asking for these changes. We all agree with that particular action and we support it.

The real problem is the administration of the Young Offenders Act. I think the public has the right to hear the debate and the concerns of those of us who represent them, because of the things that are not happening with the provincial responsibility; that is, in the administration of this act.

The tragedies we watched this weekend have a lot to do with the way the province administers its part of and responsibility to the Young Offenders Act. The government must order a public judicial inquiry into the administration of the Young Offenders Act to ensure that those within the system, and the general public as well as the young offenders themselves, are being effectively served. That is why I think we should begin the debate on this motion this afternoon.

We must improve the way we conduct business here in Ontario when it comes to our young people. We have stated that we do not want our young people always to be in secure facilities. In fact, we want them to be in community-based environments that are secure. Over the weekend we were reminded that at least in two instances, this was not to be.

We are thinking that a lot of the problems have to do with the policies and procedures that are lacking or are not being enforced or are not being funded to the extent they must be so that our young people and the public can be safe.

We know that we are able to make, and we know it is important to the public that we make this a number one priority in this province. Of course, we support the government in its position of trying to rehabilitate young offenders in settings that are important to them and to their families. At the same time, we know it is very important to the public that they be cared for -- the young offenders, that is -- in a meaningful way, not only so that they can be rehabilitated and cared for appropriately but also so that the public can be safe.

It is with a great deal of difficulty that some of us have come to this debate this afternoon, in light of the tragic death of some six people this weekend, five young offenders and a halfway house worker. It reaches really to the bottom of all our hearts, as we know the kind of commitment people in our facilities have in order to help the young people who are there, expecting and deserving our assistance.

At the same time, there is some professional risk and some personal risk. Some of the points that can be made by the speakers this afternoon and some of the suggestions that we can give to the government have regard to a lack of facilities, underfunding, and more important, a need for a public inquiry. Our party will definitely be speaking to this public inquiry, and we are now talking about a judicial inquiry.

We hope there will be a reasonable time frame so that we can come back to this House with some suggestions for improvement that will be acted upon immediately, because this is a real concern to the public. I think some things happened this weekend to families across Ontario, not only those that lost their loved ones but others as well, that we could have avoided.

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has expired.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want to say that I have listened with care to my friends the member for Hamilton West and the member for London North. I think they make a very good point inasmuch as they request an opportunity in this Legislature to debate what is clearly a matter of concern, not just to the 130 members of this assembly but to all the people of Ontario.

I know how I reacted personally on the weekend, hearing of the stories that have produced the climate of concern my friends the member for London North and the member for Hamilton West have already spoken to. I have to say, on behalf of the government, that we welcome this opportunity to debate something about which we are going to have to reflect very seriously, both as a government and as a Legislature.

As the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) indicated this afternoon, as a result of what has transpired over the last little while in the community, there is certainly going to be a concern about our ability to do the sorts of things that I think we on all three sides of the political table at Queen’s Park have indicated we want to do, which is to have good, community-based programs for young offenders and for others in the community.

I say to my friend the member for London North that she quite properly indicates some of the areas about which there has been an identified concern. The member would have heard earlier this afternoon the Minister of Community and Social Services indicate the initiatives we have taken in so far as funding supports and staffing guidelines are concerned.

I might add, in the absence of the Attorney General (Mr. Scott), that the government of Ontario, this government, has indicated -- I think, to be fair, the predecessor government indicated right at the outset -- a concern that was evident within the ranks of the Ontario public service about what the Young Offenders Act might mean in so far as certain administrative and other matters were likely to be. Some of those concerns have unfortunately been borne out.

I believe today the Attorney General has once again written, to the newly appointed Minister of Justice for Canada, indicating the desire of the government of Ontario for some change to the federal Young Offenders Act, because it is increasingly clear that change is called for if we are going to be more effectively able to cope with a number of the challenges that have been presented to providers and those enforcement agencies mandated with the responsibility of carrying out that Young Offenders Act at the provincial level.

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I want to say without any further ado that the government welcomes the opportunity to set aside the ordinary business of this Legislature this afternoon to deal with a matter of concern to all members, and certainly to the government. I say, as one member of the government, that I am very interested in hearing from my colleagues in the assembly what their advice will be as we deal, not just with the issues before us but with those aspects of public confidence to which my colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services referred in the various exchanges earlier today in question period.

I want to indicate as well the willingness of the government to listen to submissions from our friends opposite to make sure that we can move forward in a way to reinforce the very good things we all want done in the community. We want to avoid the kind of scare tactics that can sometimes arise in the context of these debates. Any of the members who have ever been associated with the group home debate in a given community -- I have just gone through one in my own community and I well appreciate, as I think all members do, that this is the kind of issue where there is an opportunity to raise fears.

It seems to me we have a responsibility, all of us in government, in the Legislature and those with a leadership role, to make sure that we recognize the problems as they present themselves and that in a serious and constructive way we find remedies to address the problems that exist, and that we do not in any way inflame public opinion. I must say in light of what has happened over the course of the last few days that I think the public will be reassured to know the members of the Legislature are working in a very constructive way to find a resolution to the current difficulty.

My colleagues and I, and most especially the Minister of Community and Social Services, welcome this debate this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker: We have now dealt with Mr. Allen’s motion under standing order 37(a), (b) and (c). We now come to standing order 37(d), where I can only put the question, shall the debate proceed?

Motion agreed to.

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr. Speaker: I will remind members they have the opportunity to speak for up to 10 minutes and any member may speak. If we run out of speakers or debaters before six of the clock, the debate will be completed. Otherwise, it will continue until the clock strikes 6 p.m.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: One rises to participate in this debate with a mixture of emotions: profound sadness, a knot in the stomach and a lot of anger that this kind of an incident or these incidents could occur in our province. As somebody who has been responsible for social services critiques for the last 10 years, I would like to try to put this in some kind of context because these things do not happen out of the blue.

I also appeal to people to deal with this rationally and not to deal with this in terms of reactions against straw men -- I speak pointedly here about the Young Offenders Act -- but to look specifically at why certain things have taken place, deal with those precise problems and not look at turning back the clock too many years to the kind of juvenile delinquent corrections service we used to have prior to the inception of the Young Offenders Act.

At any time young lives are snuffed out -- I think of those kids killed on Highway 401, many of whom were not older than the pages we have in room, who had run afoul of the law and were in difficulty in their lives at a very young age but will have no further problems because of that accident, and I think of a young woman only weeks out of a community college course, whose family had already gone through a tragic incident with an older brother being killed, who was then killed in the night doing her duty in one the group homes of this province, in an organization, Kinark Child and Family Services, that has been working now in this province under that name and others for a long, long time, sometimes dealing with people no one else wished to deal with.

It is with regret and a measured anger that I wish to express today that these things could have taken place in 1989.

We had a chance to review the Young Offenders Act in this parliament a number of years ago. As a province, I think we have implemented it more badly than any other jurisdiction in the country. I do not place the blame for that upon this government; I place it on the past Conservative government for the way it failed to leap at the opportunity to meet the spirit that law, to have one ministry deal with it instead of two, as we have decided to do, with two sets of rules and standards, and that we did not move on it more firmly.

Subsequent to that federal law being passed, we passed a law in this House, the Child and Family Services Act, after much deliberation. If I were looking at a law that I now wanted to deal with, it would not be to attack the federal Young Offenders Act. There are one or two small things I would like to see changed in that act, but that is not the agenda of the people who want that act changed. They want to take us back to the old detention centres we used to have before that act. I hope we do not have that holus-bolus reopening of that piece of legislation, but we should look at our own legislation and what we failed to do with the Child and Family Services Act.

We have not made any substantial changes in our notions of guidelines and standards for homes that are operated by private for-profit organizations, as well as by a few not-for-profit organizations. We still have staffing standards that are so wide open you can drive a truck through them, and which I think with their lack of precision can be looked at in terms of the death of Krista Sepp specifically. We have no real guarantees for the protection of staff or even the self-protection of the young offenders with the present guidelines that are established.

Our inspection system in terms of seeing how the staffing is working out is, in my view, primarily a monetary inspection to try to make sure the line-by-line accountability for the budget, which this ministry demands, is met, but not that standards of care are established and followed.

I would like to know how it is that with a person who has been incarcerated in a secure detention centre for many months before this move to Kinark, when a warning came that there was going to be some sort of problem from outside -- which we have heard very cryptically about today -- extra staffing was put on for merely a couple of weeks, from what we can gather at this stage, but nothing else was there to be able to fall back on to make decisions that might have protected this young worker’s life.

How is it that somebody coming straight out of community college, with two weeks on the job, is in that home a few weeks after there has been a warning there might be some difficulty, alone at night in that kind of circumstance? How on earth could that take place under provincial legislation? It is because we do not have guidelines to speak of that are worth a cent, that are worth anything?

This is not a new issue. I want members to know I personally raised this issue as early as 1980. People raised it well before I raised this matter. Even members of the Liberal Party raised this matter when we were dealing with the Child and Family Services Act.

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I think it is without doubt time to do what my leader was suggesting in his questions, and that is to have a public inquiry about just how all of this works. When we had the select committee on health, before this last election, studying privatization and commercialization, it was felt by many Liberals -- I regret to say, because this seemed to be a change of policy from what I had noted in the years before they became government -- that it did not matter whether you gave your money out to a private system or whether you maintained it in the public system in terms of the delivery of these kinds of services.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that there is a really profound reason why it should be nonprofit and why it should be government-controlled: If you do not have that kind of direct accountability by the government itself, then you do not impose the kinds of guidelines and standards that keep us on our toes and that keep the provision of services appropriate to the needs of the young clients.

I know the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan) has stood in this House recently and talked about what a lot of guards and workers in the system of corrections are saying today, and that is that the clientele is changing. I know that the minister will agree, in the Ministry of Community and Social Services’ responsibility for the under-16s, that the kind of clientele is changing as well with the new definitions of secure custody down to open custody and with the kinds of decisions that judges are making in terms of where people should be placed when they are released to one kind of option or another.

I am not sure that we have looked at the standards that are appropriate to each kind of institution, to make sure that the kids are protected, that the society is protected and that the workers are protected. I really think it is time that we had a major open review of that process, and in that context that we look again at whether we want this in the private system or whether we want these publicly run and publicly accountable.

The turnover of staff is enormous. The pay for staff is terrible. We know that. The training for staff, because of that turnover, is inadequate. In all these areas one has to say that these things will only lead to problems. This is the kind of matter where 10 minutes is not sufficient to address the enormity of it, either in terms of the personal tragedy which has taken place or in terms of the scope of where we should be going.

I would just plead to this House that it not turn all its attention on a federal Young Offenders Act and look for all the problems there, because it is my belief that the principles of that act are still sound. It is the implementation of it in this province which has been problematic, and that is where we should be focusing our attention and where this minister should be getting the kind of resources that he requires to run the kind of system that all of us would want if our 14-year-old child got into trouble or if our 21-year-old daughter was going to be working in that system and trying to provide the care that we would want for those children.

I therefore commend the member for bringing forward this motion this afternoon and ask all members to speak to it at length.

Mr. Brandt: I want to join with the opposition party in endorsing the concept of a public inquiry, as I indicated to the minister during question period, because I believe that there are some fundamental problems in connection with the facilities, the administration, and also, I have to say to my good friend the previous speaker, the whole issue of the Young Offenders Act as it relates to the terrible horrors that occurred this past weekend when a number of lives were lost in our province.

If I can just focus on the Young Offenders Act for a moment in connection with some of the concerns that our party has: From what I heard of the minister’s response today, essentially, I believe, we are in concert with him on some of the changes that he would like to see occur. I do not consider that to be a draconian response or a shift back to an earlier age when, in fact, we did not deal with young offenders in a more enlightened and responsible manner. But I do believe that there are some very critical and very serious errors and problems with respect to the present act that have to be addressed.

One of them comes to light in a very specific sense when you take a look at the case that occurred in the death of Krista Sepp in Midland over the past weekend, where the communications were so bad that not even the local police chief was aware that there were two young offenders in that group home. I believe the police chief had every right to know at least that there were individuals who had been charged with particular types of crimes who were being held there at that time.

When the police chief himself in that jurisdiction is not aware, I would suggest to members that the level of communications to the community and to those responsible for the administration of justice in our community is totally, completely and entirely inadequate. I think that kind of communication is reasonable, and there may be other authorities that should have that type of information as well. I would include in that perhaps the educational system and perhaps some social workers who may have to be made aware of it; but I am talking essentially of professionals who work in the field as opposed to the public at large.

I think there are also some very real concerns that relate to the question of sentencing under the Young Offenders Act and the limitation, as an example, of three years on a crime that is as heinous as the Scarborough incident, where three people lost their lives. The individual responsible for that has effectively lost one year off his life for every life that he took. I think that is just unacceptable to society as a whole.

I am not one who believes in capital punishment, I might add as an aside, but I do believe in appropriate levels of punishment and also some indication that the individuals in question are going to be safe when they are put back into society to live a normal, everyday life. The kind of aftercare for individuals like this concerns me. For these reasons, I believe that the Young Offenders Act has got to be looked at as part of any kind of inquiry that would look at the circumstances surrounding some of the incidents that have caused, I think, a real question of confidence in the minds of the public over this past weekend.

I would also like to make comment about some thrust towards having all of these facilities operated in a public way as opposed to any private facilities. Having sat on the other side of the floor from time to time -- and for all too short a time, some might say -- I do recognize that there are moments when the government has got to look at the best method of delivering -- notice I did not say the cheapest -- a particular service that makes sense perhaps to be done privately as opposed to publicly.

I would really question in this particular instance whether it was only the fact that this was a privately run group home that caused the problems. I would suggest that there were probably other issues, such as a recognized level of care that should have been provided and a recognized level of budgeting associated with that care that should have been much more in line.

If you only pay for one worker, whether that worker is public or private -- and making the presumption, if I might, that both kinds are adequately trained and with adequate levels of experience -- I would suggest that there may well be instances where a privately run group home may be as responsive to the needs of the community as a publicly run group home. I am not going to place myself in a position where I say that one is better than the other, because I believe that there is room and there may well be a need for both types of homes.

But I have the same questions, and this is why I think there is a question of confidence and why I think this particular motion is appropriate today in calling for this emergency debate, in that there are so many questions surrounding the Krista Sepp case that are very bothersome. Here we have a young lady, some 21 years of age, who has recently graduated from a community college, who has been on the job the sum total of about nine days.

There may well be some circumstances under which a more experienced male or female individual, with this kind of training but more experienced, could work alone, even though I have some concerns about people working alone in this environment. But I have to suggest that in this particular instance, with someone who has no more than about nine days of experience, one is really placing him or her in a position of jeopardy that causes me some concern. A public inquiry would come to grips with questions like the issue of whether these kinds of workers should be left in a situation where they are forced to work alone.

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Interestingly enough, on the same weekend we had individuals who escaped from another institution where there were in fact two workers who were in place at that particular time. There is no guarantee that because you have two or more workers an incident will never occur, but I suggest there is a number of workers which may be safe in particular circumstances. A public inquiry, we hope, would look at that question.

Ontario’s chief coroner, who was involved in the review of the incident that happened in 1985, indicated that he was shocked to hear that this young lady was forced to work all by herself in this particular situation.

I think there are a number of questions that have to be addressed: the quality of care, the review of the Young Offenders Act and the amount of money that is being committed on the part of the government in connection with the servicing of this program.

In dealing with it on a day-to-day basis, as I do and as many members of this Legislature do, I sense a real feeling of frustration among police authorities, social service workers and people who are involved in the security of these individuals about the lack of aftercare, in some instances, that has to be provided.

There is a feeling that they are not able to come to grips with what the Young Offenders Act really implied when it was first put into place. Really what we are saying to a young person is: “Because of your youth, we’re not going to put you into an environment where you’re exposed to hardened criminals. We are going to try to rehabilitate you.”

If rehabilitation is the foundation upon which this entire act and the facilities we have put in place, limited though they might be, are founded, if that is what this whole exercise is all about, then I think we have to look very carefully at whether or not we are meeting with a degree of success with respect to the issue of rehabilitation.

I would suggest to the minister that people in our community and society at large are asking some very direct questions. Is the act working? Are the facilities adequate? Are circumstances like those we experienced this past weekend preventable? If so, I think the people of Ontario are prepared, if necessary, to spend some more money on issues like this, on questions of this type, in order to make sure that we do have an adequate response to dealing with our young people in particular, on issues at this level of importance.

I again ask the minister to seriously consider a public inquiry. I think that would be more balanced and fair than an in-ministry review. I ask him to keep an open mind on that particular question.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Let me begin by thanking my colleagues on all sides of the House for the tenor in which this debate is taking place and in which the previous question period took place. The opportunity to blow it out of proportion is always there, and I am genuinely pleased that no one attempted to do that and no one is going to do that today.

I was in my home this past weekend, and of the three of my children who are still living at home with us, one is a 22-year-old daughter and the other is a 15-year-old son. I could not help but realize that either that 15-year-old son or that 22-year-old daughter could have been one of the two people who were killed these past three days. I guess that is what really drives it home. It could be any one of us at any time. That is what makes it so personal. I do not get the sense from anyone who has spoken so far, either during question period or now, that this is something out there that happens to other people. It could happen to any one of us.

I do not want to go into a lot of detail about the particular issues. Quite frankly, I think I have shared with the members all the hard data that I have and I will certainly share with them in the days ahead any more that I get.

But I very much want to pick up on a theme that the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston) raised and that was, I sense, supported by the member for Sarnia (Mr. Brandt), and that is that despite the tragedy we have experienced, going back to where we were before is not the answer.

I can remember very vividly when I was a director of education for a school board meeting with Judge Ross Fair, who was our family court judge at that time, and sharing with him the absolutely horrible experience we were having with our young students coming back from training schools after having been sent there for whatever period of time. They came back very disillusioned. In terms of their attitudes, they came back worse than when they left.

Our judgement was that there were no corrections taking place, there was no rehabilitation taking place, and we asked: “Judge Fair, isn’t there another way? There’s got to be a better way.” He expressed the same thing to me. He said: “I agree with you, John, but I have no alternatives. The present federal legislation and provincial legislation do not give me any other alternative. What am I supposed to do with these kids?”

That is why I so welcomed the Young Offenders Act as a move forward, and I want to say very clearly that while I believe that some changes need to be made, the act itself and the spirit behind that act are good. I do not want that to get lost.

I remember that under the old legislation, the Juvenile Delinquents Act, we treated children in a very paternalistic way. We did not recognize any of their rights. A judge simply made a disposition that this child was going to go to a training school and that was it. It was then entirely up to officials of my ministry to decide what training school, how long the children were going to stay there, what was going to happen to them and where they would go after that. They literally became wards of the crown until their 18th birthday. A 12-year-old could have found himself or herself in our custody for six years. I do not know how often that happened, but the potential was there.

What the Young Offenders Act clearly said was: “Listen, you can’t treat children with any less justice than you treat adults. There’s got to be a clearly defined sentence. There has to be a clearly defined place where that sentence is going to be carried out. You have to be sure that you do everything you can to rehabilitate young people, because they are going to go back to society.” It is not a case that we are going to be able to keep them there for the rest of their lives; they are going to go back. And how are they going to behave? What is their attitude towards themselves and other people going to be? Surely that is what we have to accomplish.

That was truly the remarkable thing about the act, and there was a tremendous debate across this country, at the federal level and at the provincial level, about the need for change. The kinds of disagreement between the two levels of government, Ontario and Ottawa, at that time had more to do with the administration and the funding and things like that than the fact that changes needed to be made, and I hope that would not get lost.

The other clear thing that the Young Offenders Act points out is that, by opening up the process, there is the possibility of open custody that would take place in communities, not in institutions. We recognized that if were going to help these young people, if we were going to help their families, then it was going to take place in their communities; it was not going to take place somewhere far away where we simply sent them and forgot about them or tried to forget about them.

That is why it is so important that we recognize the continuing community aspect of young offenders’ rehabilitation, but that immediately imposes upon us the other side of the coin, which is the protection of the public.

I must candidly say I do not think we have given that side of it as much attention as we have given dealing with the young people themselves. That is what we have to look at in this review right now: the extent to which we are supportive of the twin pillars of this act. The public has the right to be protected and expects to be. We also have a responsibility to rehabilitate the young person. That is what the whole act rests on, and I fully accept that responsibility.

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I want to share with my colleagues that as we have moved these young people into our communities, we have recognized in two specific parts of this province, in the northern part of Ontario and in the southeastern part of Ontario, the need to put community supports in place as well, and not just the facility. We have established five teams in the north and in southeastern Ontario two teams of community resources which work directly with our facilities, whether the ones we operate ourselves or the ones that are operated by community agencies.

We try to work with these young people before they go in, when we see problems coming up, we try to work with them while they are there and we try to work with them after they go back to the community. The whole sense is that while we may not be able to prevent young people from committing their first offence, which usually is minor -- that is the experience we have -- surely once we have an opportunity to work with them, we can help prevent them from committing the second and the third and the more serious one.

We have recognized that this community support system needs to be in place. As I say, thus far we have put it in place in the north and in southeastern Ontario.

With respect to the impact on the community of moving young people in there, we have realized that the ways in which we provide those services are not meeting everybody’s needs as adequately as they ought to. Because of that, we have asked Colin Maloney, who is the executive director of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto, to pull together a team of people from the total cross-section of this field to look at how we deal with children we take into care, whether it is a child who has been subject to child abuse, whether it is a child taken into care because his family simply cannot look after him any more for a whole range of reasons or whether it is a young offender. In all of those cases, we have taken that child into care; we have assumed some limited responsibility for that child’s life.

What we have asked Colin Maloney and his committee to do is to look at the ways in which we respond to those children’s needs at present, through our children’s aid societies, through our children’s mental health organizations, through a range of community service agencies, to see whether we are providing the most appropriate care to each child as that need arises; to look at the whole question of funding, to look at the whole question of staffing, to look at the whole question of resources other than funding, to look at the whole question of training. Who should be providing the service most appropriately for this particular child, regardless of what his or her need happens to be?

The question of pay differential has already come up. I have made it very clear in this House that this is a problem. The salaries we pay to employees of our directly operated facilities are higher than what we transfer to our transfer payment agencies. That has been a problem for several years. Previous speakers have already alluded to it. We are very much aware of it and I as the minister have accepted it as part of my responsibility to close that gap, to bridge that differential. I continue to accept that responsibility.

I realize that if we are going to ask communities to accept their share of the responsibility to provide service to these young people, or if it happens to be disabled people, we have to assure those communities that the necessary line of resources are in place. For that, I thank my colleagues for their support and I ask for their continued support.

Mr. B. Rae: I hate to break down this attempt by the minister to establish a kind of nonpartisan consensus, but I must say to him that I am critical of the government with respect to what has been allowed to happen; I think it is important for those questions to be asked in terms of the changes that need to be made. I think the minister is quite right in saying that the mood of the House is a sombre one, as I think is that of the public, indeed, even of the press scrum which I spoke to outside.

I think there is a recognition on everybody’s part that this is a real problem, that it poses an enormous challenge to all of us because of the importance for us to strike a balance. That balance, as I have suggested, is not simply twofold, as the minister has described, between the interests of the public and the interests of the offender; it is also, frankly, the interests of the people who are working in the institutions, whom we ask to carry what is now obviously a very substantial burden in terms of their work and their commitment, for which they are not particularly well paid, where it is now clear that many of them run a substantial risk of increasing assaults, of which we have records from the correctional institutions of all kinds, dealing with older people as well as people under the age of 18. There is tremendous emotional strain. Now we have the tragedy of Krista Sepp, which follows on from the tragedy of Celia Ruygrok which took place over three years ago.

I do not want to get into a long debate on the Young Offenders Act. I am probably one of the only members of the House who actually spoke in the debate in the House of Commons when we were debating the act several years ago. I think there do need to be some changes. I think there is a growing consensus that there need to be some changes.

I agree with my colleague the member for Scarborough West that this is no time to go back to the Juvenile Delinquents Act and this is no time to revive the notion that we can somehow treat young people as if they do not have any rights.

Sometimes the Young Offenders Act is misunderstood in that it is asserted that the basic thrust of the Young Offenders Act is that young people are not responsible for their actions. It is quite the opposite. The thrust of the Young Offenders Act is that young people are responsible for their actions, that they have certain legal rights and that they should be treated as if they have those rights when they are charged, as opposed to the Juvenile Delinquents Act, under which, as the minister has quite rightly pointed out, if a policeman thought, for whatever reason under the act, that somebody posed a problem for society or for his family or was engaged in behaviour that was deemed to be systematically disruptive, that person could be labelled, taken out of his family, taken out of his community, taken out of his school and sent off to what we used to call Borstals in England but what are called treatment centres here, and bingo, he is away.

That is not a world to which I want to return. I would even say to those who think the answer to our problem is simply to lock people up and throw away the key -- even if that were one’s philosophy -- we would have to do a better job of it, frankly, than we are doing right now.

What I want to focus on is making changes to the Young Offenders Act. I think we could probably find a consensus in this House that they needed to be made -- commonsense ones that recognize there is a particular problem, particularly with older young offenders with regard to breaches of the Criminal Code, where you have a clear breach of the Criminal Code and where there are some real problems with respect to sentencing and also questions of protection of the public. Those are things which I think we could all agree on. Even if we make the changes, we still have an issue in this province in terms of what we do.

It is not only these young people. I would remind members that the group home in question in Midland was not primarily a detention centre for kids who were found in breach of the Young Offenders Act. It was a home that was intended to be for kids who were emotionally disturbed and who were there as part of a course of treatment that was recommended, but not one that was required by a court. This was not a facility operating under the Young Offenders Act in particular. It was a centre that was operating as a group home, dealing with a range of children.

The questions one might ask are, “How is it that offenders under the Young Offenders Act found themselves there?” and, “How is it that they find themselves there cheek by jowl with other kids who may not have a similar problem or situation?” I think the issue we are going to have to come to terms with is whether we have the places, the care, the supervision, and yes, the treatment that is necessary for the children who are involved. I use the word “children” advisedly. I am speaking of young offenders, people under the age of 18.

If we are dealing here with the federal Criminal Code, we all know there are real problems in terms of treatment for adults who are perhaps not mentally incompetent or mentally insane under the McNaghten rules but nevertheless clearly suffer from psychiatric problems. There is an enormous problem in terms of the adequacy of treatment in our federal correctional institutions.

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We face an even more troubling array of problems when it comes to young people because people can end up in care for a variety of reasons. If we were to have the kind of public inquiry which I hope there will be a growing consensus is needed, I think that inquiry will expose what all of us have known for a long time; that is, that the current system has grown up bit by bit. There was a move away, in the late 1960s, towards private nonprofit homes of various kinds and descriptions. There has been a failure to look at the overall system and structure now and say: “Okay. What are we as a government really going to take responsibility for? What kinds of standards are we going to set? How are we going to make sure that the three interests are really being effectively balanced and maintained, the interest of the public in security, the interest of the staff in their security, training and development and the interest of the young people there in terms of their own future?”

The system needs direction, the young people in the system need direction and the public needs the assurance that the governments of this country and of this province take the question of security seriously.

I want to suggest that this is sometimes portrayed as sort of a right-wing or left-wing issue. It is not really. All of us have an interest in these three things, and I think all of us on reflection would say that yes, each of these three things is important. When the importance of one of them is lost, the system goes out of balance. We all recognize it. We see it. We saw it under the bad old days when the interest of the kids themselves was completely lost in the process.

I would suggest that we see it now when I do not think the interests of any of the three groups are being served. I do not think you can describe the system now in place as one that is operating in the best interest of young people themselves. Look at the stories that were contained in the very short stories today about those five boys -- dyslexic, dropping out of school, tremendous problems at home, tremendous social problems since the time they were born -- and ask yourself the question, “Is this system really serving them?”

No, it is not, obviously not, to the point of the tragedy we saw over the weekend. It clearly is not serving the interests of the people who are providing the care and who are working in the system. Finally, it is not dealing with the questions of the confidence of the public. It is to this last point that I want to return.

It is essential, whatever kind of system we devise now -- and we do not know when the federal government will move, but one hopes the realization that there have to be some changes will produce some improvements -- as we focus on this issue here, it is extremely important that we bear in mind that the public must have confidence in this system. It is essential.

I have been asked questions outside: “What should a young person do who is working in the system? What should a 22-year-old girl do today? Should she turn up for work tonight, if she is going to be working alone?” I must say those are almost impossible questions to answer, but we must find the answers.

If the minister is not going to do a public inquiry, if we cannot get him to do that -- but I think we can still put some pressure on him so that he will have to -- then I say to him he has to make some changes and he has to make them more quickly than in 90 days. If the minister thinks the public and staff are going to wait for three months while this situation is in limbo, he is sadly mistaken. The steps are going to have to be taken much more quickly than that, to do something immediately to restore the lack of public confidence.

Mrs. Cunningham: It gives me some pleasure this afternoon to be able to speak to an issue that I think has really reached all of us this past weekend.

Many of us are very concerned that it takes the tragedies we have sometimes witnessed for those of us who have the responsibility for legislation and for the implementation of legislation and regulations with regard to young people’s safety -- l think it is tragic that we also should be standing here today, often I suppose because of tragedy -- to look at changes that are our responsibility.

To that end, I would like to speak to the changes that are needed in the Young Offenders Act. We are very pleased that the minister has written to the minister at the federal level looking for those changes. We do have some control over what happens to people who are affected as a result of the court system or, more important, to people who we know have been identified as young people who will be affected by the court systems and therefore are labelled in our society as young offenders.

We have decided that young people who have been in trouble with the law, who are potentially going to be in trouble with the law, should have programs to assist them, both in preventive and rehabilitative ways. We are responsible in this province to make certain that at least an adequate level of programming exists and that these programs exist in a very professional environment which can be as comforting as possible to our young citizens but which is also safe, not only to the people who are in these environments but to the public. It is a tremendous challenge, one that I think we have taken seriously, and that we should be criticized for, because although we have taken our responsibility seriously, we have not always been able to provide the resources.

I would like to make some remarks today to the minister in that I think he has a lot of support from the opposition parties and from the members of the public in this province, the taxpayers and young people alike, for support of an improvement to the programs that we provide. We know that the reality in the system we work in, this democratic system, is that there is a limited number of resources. I guess what we are trying to say to the minister, and ultimately to the government, is that we should be thinking very seriously about how these resources are administered, how the money is spent and just where the money is targeted. If we have a priority in this province at all, it is to protect the future lives of our young people and their families and the public at large. Therefore, today we are in this emergency debate because we think we can do a better job.

I would like to speak to the issue of prevention, first of all. There are many issues related to the results of this Young Offenders Act, to the kinds of things that happen in the province because of that act in the province and the kinds of restrictions that are put on our young people because of their behaviour. A very simple one we have been chatting about and asking questions about in this House has to do with the beginning of all of this, and that is truancy in schools.

We have asked this government if it would come forth with some very specific directions for judges so they can provide programs, so they can say as part of their judgement, “You shall participate in this program.” We know that is possible. We do have the authority to do this. That is the very beginning of this kind of prevention, at least as far as public programs are concerned -- not families but public -- and it begins at very early ages. I am talking about nine-, 10- and 11 -year-olds in our school system who are allowed to be away from school. They are allowed to be on the streets without a program being specified. We are not doing them a service. Yes, I do believe in the rights of young people, but I also believe in direction: direction that would be aimed at assisting them. I think this government could very quickly come up with some guidelines or some directions that judges should use. That is a very specific example of something that could happen.

When we are looking at the group homes, I think anyone who is involved in the administration of group homes right now has a couple of real concerns. One of them has been spoken to already by one of my colleagues today. The minister is very aware of it, and it is a tremendous challenge; that is the inadequacy and the unfairness as to people like that young social worker, in their remuneration, depending on where they work. If they work for a government agency, they are paid a certain amount of money. If they work for a nonprofit group, they are paid a different amount of money. If they work for a commercial group, they are paid a different amount of money again.

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I think we should be looking at the value of the job and at paying people for two reasons. First, they are very worth while. They spent a long time trying to become professionals and they deserve to be paid as professionals in very high-risk work.

I think it is worth it to us, not just to people they are counselling but to society as a whole. It has been proved to us over the years, and certainly more recently in these last few months and weeks, that one of the real problems is keeping good people in these jobs. You can imagine what parents are saying this evening at the dinner table when it comes to future professions and where people ought to spend their lives and whom they ought to work with. We really do need people working in the social service field.

I also believe the staffing processes and the staffing regulations should be looked at. The minister stated that himself today. It is tricky; we know it is tricky. But if you have to err on any side, it is on the side of safety for all of us. I think we should definitely be looking at that.

I have one last point on prevention that I think is extremely important. We know we are extremely short of adolescent psychiatrists. When all of us have families who come to our offices, constituents across this whole province with young people who are looking for help, we just do not know what to say to them when they say, “I’ve been waiting six months to see an adolescent psychiatrist.” We make a phone call and the psychiatrist says, “Truly, I can’t move that person up this list.” Everybody knows that is a problem.

We also have an extreme shortage of psychiatric nurses and counselling staff across this province. When we are looking at prevention and rehabilitation, we need the resources.

If we can say anything here today, we plead with this government to take a look at the effectiveness of its programs, to take a look at any rules or guidelines that can be of assistance. Yes, they may cost more money but one has to look at the effect of not doing it. If we do not have prevention programs, we will spend a lot more money on people who will be institutionalized down the way, who will be involved in even more serious crimes and in fact in the court system which we will experience as a result now of these two tragedies this weekend. It is a very expensive process in the courts.

I would like to support very strongly a public judicial inquiry into the administration of the Young Offenders Act, because I think there are many experts out there and day-to-day workers in the field who will come forth and give us some extremely important suggestions for improvement and for changes. Young offenders themselves may come forth.

I can only speak on a personal note to say that I have visited group homes across this province in the last few weeks and months. They have told us what they would like to have in the way of programming and they have told us why they are there. They have told us they want to remain in school with their friends.

There are many program improvements they themselves can share with us, and I think that will be a more efficient way of providing for both preventive measures, protective measures and rehabilitation measures. I support this debate this afternoon and certainly the public inquiry as suggested.

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: We speak in the House today as a result of the two tragedies that occurred this weekend. It has been noted by earlier speakers that there is a very sombre mood in the House today, one I probably have not sensed for a very long time.

I think that obviously comes from the grief that has resulted from these two tragedies. It is not only we who feel that grief, but all those of us who work in the criminal justice system. If I may be allowed to, I would like to express condolences to those people who suffered loss as a result of these tragedies this weekend, from all of us in the criminal justice system because we all feel it.

Today I would like to speak to the act we are debating this afternoon. I would like to talk a little about the Young Offenders Act and its philosophy, and also make some comments on behalf of the government of Ontario on where I think we should be moving with this act.

As we all know, the act is federal law and it is up to the provinces to administer this law. The Young Offenders Act for 12-year-olds to 15-year-olds came into effect on April 1, 1984, and for 16-year-olds to 17-year-olds on April 1, 1985. It is the Ministry of Community and Social Services that administers young offenders from 12 to 15, and it is the Ministry of Correctional Services that administers young offenders from 16 to 17 years old.

The Young Offenders Act represents the legal response to changing contemporary knowledge, cultural values and attitudes in respect of young persons who come into conflict with the law. It reflects the belief that young persons are capable of individual thought and responsibility and should therefore bear responsibility for their illegal actions. The act further recognizes that young persons are different from adults in that they are less mature and more dependent on others.

For these reasons, young persons should not be considered to be the same as adults and should be given the necessary supervision, discipline, control, guidance and assistance commensurate with their identified needs. The act emphasizes the involvement of young persons in decisions affecting them as well as the importance of the family to the development of the young person.

The primary mission of the Ministry of Correctional Services is to provide custody, community supervision and information reports as directed by the courts and as provided in federal and provincial legislation governing correctional services in this province. With respect to young offenders, the ministry is providing a continuum of care and services necessary to afford young offenders the opportunity to assume responsibility for their actions and to enhance their capacity to function in a socially acceptable manner.

The ministry brings to the implementation of the Young Offenders Act fundamental principles that guide all of its operation. These include: Any aspect of service of intervention on the part of ministry staff is regarded as one aspect of a larger continuum of care resulting in ongoing assessment, classification and program planning; all services are provided in a positive climate to engender positive personal and social adjustment on the part of young offenders through ongoing staff training and development; the use of incarceration is perceived to be a sanction of last resort; the least interference possible is exerted upon young offenders in order to provide them with service and/or assistance; the quality of services provided is monitored on an ongoing basis through program review and evaluation; the ongoing involvement and participation of the local community in the care of young offenders is ensured.

The focus of this ministry is habilitative, and where appropriate, rehabilitative. We attempt to improve the capability of young offenders to function in an acceptable fashion within the ministry and within society. But this is not a perfect act and we believe improvements are possible. On some of those, we have already notified the federal government of our intent to seek changes, and we hope in the future we can work together on those improvements.

Since the passage of the Young Offenders Act, the government of Ontario has been requesting that the federal government undertake amendments to the act which facilitate the protection of the public, while at the same time promoting the rehabilitative nature of youthful offenders. Specifically, the government of Ontario has advocated the following significant changes.

We need a single level of custody. Currently, youth courts determine whether young persons are placed in secure custody or open custody. This results in a system of placement that is rather inflexible and at times inappropriate. The government of Ontario has proposed that the Young Offenders Act be amended to provide for a single level of custody. Under such a proposal, the custodial authority would be able to ensure an appropriate placement, having due regard for the protection of the public and the interests of the young person.

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My colleagues the Attorney General and the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) have been pressing the federal government for amendments to the act to facilitate the transfer to adult court of young persons charged with serious offences involving violence or to increase maximum young offender disposition length for serious violent offences.

One of the many difficulties in this area has been the reluctance of youth courts to transfer young persons to adult court, given the stated lack of programs for young people in federal penitentiaries. The federal government has commissioned a study of the appropriateness of the current transfer and sentencing provisions, and we have urged this process be completed as quickly as possible and the necessary amendments introduced.

Ontario has also expressed concern to the federal government over the past few years about the provisions of the Young Offenders Act relating to mentally disordered young offenders. Of special concern are the provisions that permit young disordered offenders to refuse to undergo the necessary and appropriate treatment. A number of proposals are currently being reviewed to develop better ways to deal with youths who have committed offences as a result of psychiatric problems.

My colleagues the Attorney General and the Solicitor General have expressed concerns that young persons under the age of 12 are excluded from the Young Offenders Act no matter what their conduct. Ontario has advocated mechanisms to permit selected individuals under the age of 12 to be dealt with by the youth court if accused of serious crimes of violence.

The provincial solicitors general had a number of concerns relating to the strict statutory rules preventing the disclosure of information that would identify young offenders. Many of these concerns were shared by my ministry. Some of our suggested amendments were implemented by the federal government in 1986 in Bill C-106. However, significant concerns remain over whether the act contains significant latitude to ensure the protection of the public. We continue to press for further changes in this area.

Ontario continues to press for changes to the Young Offenders Act. However, we are concerned over the length of time taken by the federal government to review these matters. Notwithstanding the lack of action by the federal government, we will continue to urge amendments to the Young Offenders Act to ensure that the correct balance of interest of youth in Ontario and the wider public interest are taken into account.

I would like to close by reviewing some of the facilities and some of the programs we offer to young offenders 16 and 17 years old in this province. We have young offender facilities that range from secure custody facilities throughout the province to secure detention to open custody residences, probation and parole services. We have a total staffing to take care of young offenders in this province in this age group of 1,159 people.

We think the structure for care, supervision, treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders is adequate in this province for our 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds in the 15 detention centres, the eight custody centres and 123 probation offices that supervise our young offenders in this province.

In closing, I would like to say, as has been related by many of the speakers earlier -- I was very touched by some of the remarks from members from all sides of the House -- that what is very important as we work to improve and reform the criminal justice system in this country, as we can see from the tragedies that have occurred this weekend, is that it is incumbent upon all of us to work and to strive to improve the social justice system in this country, because through improvements to the social justice system we will be able to build a fair and just society, and therefore be able to cope in a criminal justice way.

Mr. Allen: It gives me no pleasure to rise and participate in this debate. I am afraid all of us carry a heavy burden with us this afternoon and have over the weekend and will in succeeding days. That is certainly true of ourselves; it is true of the minister; it is true of his colleagues; it is true of the minister who has just spoken; it is true of the third party, and certainly it is true of the public.

The minister is not alone when he says he has children in his family of the age we are referring to. I also have a niece who works in a facility of this kind. Her parents have often asked me questions about whether it is safe and what they can expect. I have not dared to call them over the weekend and ask them what they are feeling at this moment; I just have not been able to do that.

We also know that our families go in different directions. One of the real tragedies and ironies of this situation is that Krista Sepp comes from a family that went down both sides of the street. Krista Sepp derived her great impulse to work in this kind of home with this kind of young person as a result of the experience of a brother who had got off on the other side of the street, who was in deep trouble and who might have found himself more seriously afoul of the law than he had at that point in his life when he was murdered.

I think when any of us look at the question of young offenders, the act, the circumstances and the institutions young offenders find themselves in, we have to sort of feel our way to both sides of the street in order to get a bearing on our feelings, because our kids can go either one of those ways. They might be subject to the Young Offenders Act or other criminal legislation, or they might be subject to employment in the institutions that attempt to help those young offenders and get into that encounter where the risk occurs.

I want to stress that fact as we look at two things together, the Young Offenders Act on the one hand, and on the other the institutions that the young people who come under the act’s jurisdiction frequently end up in. As well, those young people who are emotionally disturbed or disabled and find themselves in group homes are occasionally mixed in with young offenders.

I am glad the minister was here to speak to the Young Offenders Act. I do not want to spend a lot of my time speaking to that point, but certainly none of us wants to return to an earlier era of apprehension and treatment of juvenile delinquents. All of us want to see justice for our young people, just as we want justice for ourselves as adults if we happen to be involved with the justice system in a minor or major way.

We all want to see their rights respected. We all want to see community-based rehabilitation. We know that is best, but we also know we have to ensure there is public confidence in all that goes on in the name of the law and in the name of social service institutional care, because without that public support we cannot advance very far down those roads.

There are moments like this when we feel some repairing needs to be done, and it is important that the Young Offenders Act, among other things, be looked at carefully. It is of course under review in certain aspects already. Perhaps the public is not always aware of elements of the act that in fact do permit requests for information to be transferred on a discretionary basis. Young people in the older category can sometimes be tried in other settings and in other ways, depending upon the severity of the crime and so on. There is some latitude in the act even as it stands.

I want to emphasize that a very critical question we should be addressing in this context is the resources we put at the disposal of families that are at risk in the first place. I want to remind the minister of a study that he knows well and that we should bear in mind at this point, and that brings us back in the domain of the Thomson debate around poverty, the relief of poverty and income maintenance.

We know that children who are poor, children who are in welfare homes end up with massive psychiatric problems. There is a poor school performance rate in those families: 40 per cent for young men and 28 per cent among the young women. That leads on to all kinds of other problems in life. We know that out of poor families come all sorts of high-ratio learning disabilities and greater degrees of illness, problems that do not afflict children in other walks of life. Out of that come the kinds of emotions and attitudes that produce the world of delinquency for them. Therefore, it is critically important, when we look at this kind of issue, that we realize that fundamentally we are dealing with a problem that is overwhelmingly also a problem of poverty and poor people, and the necessity of addressing that issue.

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At the same time, the irony is that when persons who find themselves on the other side of the law and find themselves under the jurisdiction of the Young Offenders Act, having perhaps been incarcerated and then come to a group home, find themselves with fewer resources disposed to help them when they are in the group home than at earlier periods in their apprehension under the law. That surely ought not to be.

Surely the transmission finally in the community setting ought to be equally well resourced, so that it can play its part in the transmission system that delivers them back into community living as fully participating young people and adults.

We know also along the way that if they have been, for example, in the hands of a children’s mental health centre, they will be in another transfer agency that does not have the resources to deal with them adequately. In this House I have spoken of West End Creche, where the turnover in staff is appalling and where the income levels are at no commensurate level with the training of the people involved.

Children are dumped into those places by psychiatrists who refuse to look after them. It is not just the shortage of child psychiatrists; generally speaking they do not want to treat children and those underfunded agencies have to look after those kids. The kids often wait for months to get into them and the families go through hell waiting to get them there.

When we are into this question, we are into the whole range of transfer agencies that receive low funding from the ministry. The minister has said that he has asked for subventions from the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) in order to deal with that question, but that does not put the question to one side. It tells us the minister is trying to do something in the context of government, but what it also tells us is that the minister, in solidarity with the cabinet -- because we know that there is such a thing as cabinet solidarity, or I understood there was -- has to bear that responsibility that in fact he has not been able to get that money, the transfers have not been made.

Therefore, we are in situations in the groups homes in question where, as I said in my opening defence of an emergency debate, because of the turnover 50 per cent of the staff are on probation; recruitment is incredibly difficult; pay is poor; turnover is high, and training costs are inordinately high because it is necessary to retrain and retrain in the context of in-service training. As one goes through the whole problem, one discovers a fundamental responsibility that the ministry and the government have in terms of the support of these institutions to make them function properly.

The minister has said that he has a review. I can only say to the minister that this is an emergency that calls for more than just the establishment of reviews. I have to ask him, if he is going to be replying at the end of this debate, what he proposes to do at this point in time. Will he, for example, provide a new regulation immediately that will require that, at least for the interim while the reviews are under way, there will be no fewer than two persons in charge and present in a home at any one time so the public can at least rest somewhat assured that the issue will be handled at that level?

Second, will he also provide the transfer money that will be necessary to those institutions in order to maintain that additional staffing? in the interim some action is necessary. The review, for the moment, is not enough.

Mr. Sterling: I have had some experience with regard to young offenders’ legislation in my former role as Provincial Secretary for Justice. in February 1982, Robert Kaplan, then Solicitor General, brought forward the Young Offenders Act after a long period of consultation, but evidently did not follow any of the suggestions of the many provinces which had put forward suggestions for the Young Offenders Act at that time.

I only want to point out that particular fact because this is a complicated area of law. It involves basically two jurisdictions: the federal jurisdiction making the law and then the province trying to implement that law which has been put down upon it by the federal presence.

We found in 1982, dealing with Mr. Kaplan and his bureaucrats, that he was not willing to listen long enough and hard enough -- particularly hard enough -- to Ontario when he forged the Young Offenders Act at that time. When I went back today and read my presentation on behalf of the Ontario government to the standing committee on justice and legal affairs on February 23, 1982, it is interesting that we talked about many of the problems which are there today. We talked about the whole problem of setting the age at 18 years without looking properly at the other aspects of the Young Offenders Act. I refer to issues like the definition of secure custody and open custody.

Our party has called for a public inquiry. Quite frankly, I am not certain whether a public inquiry is needed, but it is certain that some avenue, some method of discussion is needed above and beyond what we are doing this afternoon. While the government has stated that it has made submissions, and I heard the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Ramsay) heap some scorn on our federal government with regard to its not acting on that matter, there has been little opportunity for members of this Legislature to talk to the people who are implementing our Young Offenders Act in Ontario today.

What is so disheartening in one regard in this whole matter is that this is not the first time this issue has come to the fore. Perhaps this is the time, in losing six young people over the past weekend, that it has come to the fore with such an impact. But as short a time as two weeks ago, members may remember that I asked the Attorney General about his concern in a case where six Brampton teenagers kidnapped and gang-raped a 14-year-old girl in November 1986. The Attorney General was denied the transfer of those particular individuals to adult court.

Evidently, all those individuals who were young offenders at the time the crime was committed are now 18 years of age or more. We pointed out to our colleagues in Ottawa in 1982 that there was a difficulty in transferring young people under the Young Offenders Act into adult court in that we could not predict what judges would say when that request was made. What happened with regard to that particular case, about which I asked a question in this Legislature two weeks ago, was predicted as far back as 1982. We expressed our concern in 1982 over the maximum sentence of three years for individuals and control of those individuals after the three-year term was up.

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Another concern we had at that time with regard to the Young Offenders Act was the fact that the government’s stated intention was that young people should not be imprisoned as long as they were under the existing system, where at that time everyone who was 16 years old or more was tried under the adult court system. We stated very clearly that we thought the exact opposite would happen. In fact, that is what has happened. Under the Young Offenders Act, more young people are finding themselves in secure custody than ever before. Therefore, the whole intent of the Young Offenders Act and the age of 18 as the qualification for the Young Offenders Act, I think, is in question.

The second major concern we indicated back in 1982 was our concern over the flexibility needed for open and secure custody and the ability of the corrections system to allow a greater degree of freedom for those who were progressing as they went through it. That has not been achieved, as I understand it, at the present time. In my opinion, our adult system of justice is better than our young offenders system in that regard.

The spate of serious and violent crimes which we have witnessed in our province over the last six or eight months, or heard about where these particular individuals were brought to trial, has brought to the fore the realization that while we have pegged the age of 18 years as the age when adulthood takes place, and people under that age are minors, we still have not come to realize in our laws that people who commit crimes at the ages of 16 and 17 have to be dealt with in a serious manner by our society.

I hesitate to say this, but it is still my opinion that we made a mistake in 1982 in changing the age from 16 to 18 when dealing with young offenders under this piece of legislation. People, when they are 16, are given the responsibility and privilege of driving automobiles. We trust them to make reasonable decisions in doing that.

When they are 16 and 17, they are usually of a physical size where they can commit significant and serious crimes. If I have made an observation over the period of time in which I have been a parent and a representative, I believe that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds are now probably much more worldly and sophisticated and have better access to information that would allow them to be involved in crime.

In winding up, I would like to say to the government members that if they say to us that a public inquiry is not adequate or not satisfactory to them, I do not think they can hide it in the closed rooms of the cabinet. I do not think they can hide it in terms of the policymakers in their ministries. I really believe that if they want to have a reasonable, logical law, they should refer it at the very least to a committee like the standing committee on administration of justice or perhaps a select committee and let that committee call in the people and have a talk with them. Maybe they will get some reasonable suggestions so that we will have a better Young Offenders Act in the future.

Mr. Offer: I rise today to speak on this matter, which is of great urgent concern. The tragic events of this past weekend and of years past have resulted in a series of difficult and vexing questions. We as legislators, as persons with our own families, as representatives of our community, are called upon in a very fundamental way to re-examine and reassess not only the needs of the individuals but also the needs of the community and indeed of society at large. We as legislators are called upon to revalue and reassess the whole question of the balance between the need to rehabilitate and the need to protect.

I would rather -- and it is trite to say -- not have to stand today and keep in mind the tragedy of the past weekend. I would rather those events had not occurred, and I speak about those as one who was on Highway 401 travelling to Kingston with the member for Yorkview (Mr. Polsinelli) and passed the scene of the tragedy. As I speak today, I keep in mind that awful scene we saw as we passed.

We are dealing with a confidence of the public in dealing with the young offenders. We are dealing with a question of whether the public at large believes that we as legislators are called upon to make that decision as to whether the Young Offenders Act does in fact meet the principles for which it was designed, and I think that we have to make that decision.

As I have heard all members say, and I support what all members have said today, I think that we do not want to go backwards, that we do support the principles of the Young Offenders Act: first, the right of society to be protected from the illegal behaviour of young persons; second, the need for these young people to be accountable for their actions; third, the rights and needs of the young people themselves.

I think this Legislature has in its comments to date indicated that the Young Offenders Act is important, it must be preserved, it must be improved, but we do not want to make one large step backwards, as we did under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act. As best we can as legislators, we want to make certain that the principles as enunciated by the Young Offenders Act are able to be carried out. It requires a reassessment and an evaluation. It requires us as legislators to make certain as best we can that those principles are carried forward.

When I speak today, I speak not only as one who passed that scene but also as a father of three young girls, none of whom is yet over the age of nine. We want to keep in mind whether the Young Offenders Act is there to protect not only your own particular family but, of course, society and the community at large.

I think the principles enunciated in the YOA are important; they are fundamental and must be preserved and we as legislators must do the things that are necessary in terms of making certain that those particular principles are carried forward.

When we have made the decision that we want to maintain the YOA, that we want to carry forth those principles, we must also state that the incidents of the past while have resulted in an erosion of confidence in the implementation of the act. We have to say: “Well, then, we have the responsibility. What can we do, as persons duly elected, to make certain the implementation of that act best serves the needs of those for whom it was implemented, those who find themselves within the youthful offender milieu, and those also of society who find themselves in demand of protection?”

There are things that can be done. We have heard today from the minister of the review with respect to the security measures in place at all secure detention centres. We have heard of the review in terms of staffing guidelines and facilities. This is necessary and it is one on which he expects to receive the report, as he has indicated, within 90 days.

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There is also a change to the Young Offenders Act that can be done through the federal area. I know the Attorney General since 1985 has indicated to the federal government that the maximum penalty presently allowed or available under the YOA must be changed. It really is not consonant with the public’s perception as to what should be available in terms of sentencing, with its perception that there is the necessity for a greater flexibility in terms of sentencing, that there must be an increase in the maximum disposition available under the act and that this is necessary to make certain the act meets the needs for which it was designed.

On the one hand we must give to those who dispose of these matters flexibility in terms of sentencing, while on the other hand we must make certain the whole thrust towards rehabilitation is not diminished. We must make certain those who find themselves youthful offenders have their needs met in terms of rehabilitation, in terms of being able, in many ways, to change the track, the path on which they initially set out. That is something we must continue to do.

I think the efforts of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, not only today but in the past, continue to work in that area of analysis, of making certain that those persons who need help get that help. We must maintain that balance. We must maintain the balance of not only meeting the needs of individuals but also of protecting society at large, the communities we all live in.

I think this type of review is obviously necessary. It is one I feel will start rebuilding some of the erosion of confidence that has happened, certainly this past weekend. I think we, as legislators, must make certain that type of review continues, that it is a clearly evolving and ever-changing process, so we can meet the needs not only of society at large, not only of the communities, but also of those who find themselves within the process.

As I indicated at the outset, it would be better if the events of the past weekend, of course, had not happened, but we must, as legislators, meet the concerns of the people of this province in as determined, committed and forceful a way as possible. These reviews take us along that path.

Mr. Reville: There are some issues on which it matters very little that this government is drifting. For instance, it has not hurt me at all that I have not had to go out and shop all day Sunday, and the fact that this government has taken a year to rush that issue through the House does not cause me any concern.

This is not one of those issues. This is an issue on which there has been drift for many years. The tragic occurrences of last week are not a coincidence. The conditions for those tragedies have been there for a number of years and in fact there have been other tragedies because of the government’s lack of determination and commitment, as the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Offer) would put it.

If we consider the events of the past week and think of the grief, rage, despair and fear that those events have engendered -- we have listened this afternoon to a very sombre Legislature try to grapple with the elements of these tragedies, and for the most part, try not to set up straw men to knock down but to look at the real problems in the system -- we cannot help but go back to what is an almost unimaginable body count.

We have seven young people dead in a week, six of whom were in the care or were supposed to have been in the care of this government. I do not know whether members of the Legislature have included in their recounting of these tragedies the young person who last week eluded staff at an open custody centre and killed himself. That is another young person who has died and I submit the person has died because the government has not adequately organized, planned and funded the response our society should be making to young people in difficulty.

The member for Mississauga North has talked about the Young Offenders Act. He has said it must continue to be supported, or the principles behind it must be supported. I think that is what he said and I certainly agree with that.

If you want to speak about the record of the Attorney General on this score, there has been no question the Attorney General has been a foe of the Young Offenders Act for three years and some months. He did not like it in spite of the fact it is both a large-L Liberal and a small-l liberal piece of legislation.

The principle of that legislation is, how do we keep young people from being hopelessly enmeshed in the criminal justice system? We all know that once that happens, the chances of becoming a hardened criminal seem to go up in a way that should make us all ashamed, but we know that is the case.

As one of the politicians who has gone to the wall time and time again to defend the concept of care in the community and who has stood trying to keep his face immobile while the howling ratepayers want another group home not to open, I feel personally betrayed by this government.

There is a proposal I am supporting even now in my community for an open custody home, which I will continue to support, but I am going to have a hard time in the face of the anxiety, rage and fear that might legitimately be expressed by communities confronted with fostering in their own community a system they do not have much confidence in.

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There are a lot of kids out there who need help. There are a lot of kids out there who need help who used to be dealt with, sometimes horrifically, in other systems: in the training schools, and I am glad they are gone; in the institutions for the developmentally delayed, and I am glad they are gone. But we have not been able to put in place systems to pick up the slack left behind when the training schools disappeared and when many of the institutions for the developmentally delayed disappeared.

We have young people -- an increasing number of young people, I would submit, as the underclass in our province continues to grow -- who will be in need of very relevant help. The best place for them to get that help clearly still is in the community, but it has to be done with a lot more care than it has been done in the past.

My leader today talked about the three objectives, and I do not think they are much different than the three objectives mentioned in the last speech, by the member for Mississauga North. We have to get timely help to the kids who need it; we have to make sure the care givers can give that help in an atmosphere that fosters help and creates security for the care givers, and of course, we must protect the public.

We will hear, I regret to say, in the next few days and weeks some howls from the right who will light with unseemly glee on some of the details of some of the circumstances of the past week and of the past few months. There will be a cry to return to secure custody, to institutions, to any form of response that means people are taken out of society and not returned. That would be the wrong response. I know we are not going to get that response from this government, but we are going to have to get more, and more quickly, than the response today of the Minister of Community and Social Services has indicated we are going to get.

Yes, we need to get the care givers together and find out just what it is that is facing them on the front lines, but let’s be fair about this. In everybody’s pile of mail, there is a historical perspective of some of the overtures that people in the detention home business have been making to this government ever since it was in place. It outlines for us chapter and verse what kinds of concerns have been raised and the lack of response that has been received from this government.

I would like to say again, because it goes to the same minister, that one of the great and wonderful preventions that could happen in this province would be the implementation of George Thomson’s report. I do not expect there is a soul in this Legislature who refuses to believe in 1989 that the connection between poverty, malnutrition and dismal opportunity and being in trouble is an absolutely direct connection, and that the expenditure of the funds required to implement the Thomson report will take pressure off the open custody department of the Minister of Community and Social Services, and take pressure off the health system of the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) and off the correctional system of the Minister of Correctional Services.

This is an emergency. The government must move to solve it.

Mr. Jackson: Like all members in this Legislature, I am saddened that the circumstances of this tragic weekend for six youths of this province have caused today’s debate in the Legislature to even occur. I share with all members the statement made by the minister with respect to his concern for this tragedy, in the hope that we as legislators, in our process of building a better society, can do whatever is in our power to prevent its recurrence.

I welcome the minister’s call for his review and I know this is not a new request by the minister. As all members of the House are aware, the minister has held this responsibility in Ontario for a little over four years now. He was also an outstanding critic of the preceding government in this area, given his long-standing interests in the matters relative to his ministry.

I come from Halton. Like many members of the Legislature, we have some reference point to the Young Offenders Act. We have an institution in Halton called the Syl Apps Youth Centre and it has not escaped public interest in the course of these last few years. Currently, the minister has indicated to the press that he is reviewing several matters that have been brought to his attention about the circumstances at the Syl Apps centre.

These are matters with respect to students who have been fleeing custody, who have broken custody and fled the community; with morale problems with the personnel; with a tremendously high staff turnover; with burnout, and with all those problems associated with the rather unique and challenging circumstances that corrections officers and treatment centre staff are involved with in their daily activities and their supportive work in these institutions.

Although this review today was announced in the House as a blanket statement, it should not go unnoticed that the minister has engaged to a degree in an ad hoc approach, where circumstances have inflamed themselves and perhaps got out of control in the presence of the media, and therefore he has been called to act.

I was disappointed today in the announcement by the government from one perspective, in that the government’s review is limited to the correctional institutions and the kinds of work with respect to young offenders, and that this narrow focus of the minister’s review does not take into account other circumstances in Ontario where civil servants and other persons assisting in the social service network in this province are at risk.

I bring to the minister’s attention something we raised with him during the recent estimates of his ministry, when we indicated there were legitimate concerns in response to actual murders occurring at interval houses in this province. There are the tragic circumstances of wife beaters who have attempted to break into these halfway houses or homes for battered women.

Aside from the problems they have experienced with underfunding, with overcrowding and with being unable to provide all the necessary spaces, having mentioned all of those concerns which the minister is aware of, the number one concern these people too have indicated consistently to this government is their concern with respect to security in these situations -- security of the building and security of singular supervisors. As members can well imagine, we are talking almost entirely about women personnel being involved in these institutions in a supervisory capacity. The request has been made that this be taken more seriously by this government and also that this government review the funding circumstances which lead to such limited personnel in these institutions overnight and, in some instances, during the day.

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I ask the government if it also would consider broadening its mandate to include this legitimate question about the security of those volunteers and staff members involved in Ontario’s interval houses and shelters for battered women and families.

I was concerned that on at least three occasions in the last week, the government has made references to calling on our federal government to amend the Young Offenders Act. I am concerned, not because I do not agree with the government and the minister that the Young Offenders Act requires amendment, but I am disappointed that there are so many points within the Young Offenders Act on which the minister here in Ontario disagrees with the interpretation of the minister in Ottawa, our Minister of Justice.

There have been many incidents in the last several months with respect to the Young Offenders Act which have borne out as testimony to the government’s unclear understanding of its power and authority of this act, but it is my understanding that when the Young Offenders Act was brought in by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, it was an effort, among many things, to provide provinces with a certain amount of autonomy and that autonomy was set out for them clearly in legislation.

As I said earlier, coming from Halton, we are no strangers to concerns with respect to the Young Offenders Act. There has been much in the media of late with respect to the circumstances of the release of a triple murderer.

The community and the media and members of this House have raised legitimate concerns about the government’s ability to interpret this legislation. As I recall, in a Toronto Star article of January 31, the minister said that the killer’s records must be kept confidential for five years, and yet when you look up a certain section within the act, it is clear that within the scope of the act, the records can be released for up to five years. That is provided for in section 44.1, an apparent contradiction in terms of the way the government reads the legislation and the way the federal government states that the legislation empowers the minister to do so.

The fact is that rules for disclosing any information are set out in section 46 of the act and that no information is to be divulged, “except as authorized or required by this act,” and it goes on to say that there is a penalty of imprisonment if it is not followed. But there are exceptions to the general rule as set out in section 44. One of these is found in section 44.1(1)(h), which I raised in the presence of the minister in this House, which gives access to court records to “any person, or person within a class of persons, designated by the Governor in Council, or the Lieutenant Governor in Council....”

This is why the community is confused, when a week ago Sunday the minister said he could not tell the police anything at all about the identity of an individual until after five years have expired and then, after two days of questioning in the House, the minister indicates that he now has informed the police.

I guess if the minister is going to engage in an examination, as he stated in the House today, the minister should be examining as well the kind of legal advice he is receiving, whether he gets it from the Attorney General, and if the Attorney General is not present some other noted barrister within cabinet, or if it is his own ministry barristers who are giving him legal counsel. That too should be examined: why we have differing reports --

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Polsinelli): Order. The member’s time has expired.

Mrs. Fawcett: I too wish to offer my sincere sympathy to all families of those who were involved in this weekend’s tragedies. It has indeed made us all do some serious thinking, and I commend the minister for his statement. But today I would like to talk about how we in Ontario deal with people, particularly young people, who have contravened the law.

In my riding, the Brookside Youth Centre is operated as a secure-custody institution under the Young Offenders Act. This legislation came into effect for young persons aged 16 and 17 years on April 1, 1985. Responsibility for the care and supervision of young offenders in Ontario is divided between two ministries. The Ministry of Community and Social Services looks after the younger age group, from 12 to 15 years, while the Ministry of Correctional Services is responsible for the 16- and 17-year-old age group.

Members may be interested to know that young persons under correctional supervision in the community are commonly required to take part in community-service-order programs or to make restitution to the victims of their offences. As a matter of fact, last year alone nearly 98,000 hours of unpaid community service work was performed by young offenders under the orders of provincial courts. In addition, more than $216,000 was paid back to victims of offences committed by young persons.

I believe that all members of the public need to be aware of how we, as a society, deal with our offenders. To broaden my awareness, I have recently toured the Brookside Youth Centre in my riding. During my visit to Brookside, I saw the educational component of this facility, which is designed as a secondary school administered by the Northumberland and Newcastle Board of Education.

Residents who are enrolled in high school programs in the community prior to coming here are able to continue their studies in a wide range of academic subjects. Vocational training is also offered and there is special emphasis on recreational programs: sports and fitness, arts and crafts and leisure-time activities all have a place in the development of young minds and bodies. In fact, personal development is, in a nutshell, the aim of correctional programs offered to young offenders in institutions of this type.

Young offenders learn the skills, the knowledge and the perspective on their own lives that can enable them to carry on in ways that are acceptable to society once they are released. For some, the critical factor may be acquiring the ability to read; for others, it may be coming to grips with an alcohol or drug problem or learning to control an aggressive temperament; for an alarming number who have come from homes wracked by abuse and neglect, the needed ingredient may simply be a sense of self-respect and self-worth.

Brookside and indeed all of the young offender facilities are staffed by competent, caring individuals with a strong sense of the needs and sensitivities of young people. In addition, they are supported by dedicated volunteers who give freely of their time and talents. At Brookside, there are nine such people who come in on a regular basis, assisting these young people with remedial reading and mathematics, helping out with recreational programs or guiding young people with special problems through such organizations as Alcoholics Anonymous. Volunteers at Brookside and in correctional services throughout the province add strength and credibility to the programs we offer and real hope to the likelihood of rehabilitation for many of these young people.

In the final analysis, the way we treat those who have broken society’s rules -- whether with compassion or scorn, whether with interest or apathy, whether with concern or neglect -- will have a direct and irreversible bearing on how they behave when they are inevitably released back into our communities.

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Mr. Farnan: I want to address the areas of the protection of the public, protection of the staff in open- and closed-custody facilities and the provision of programs of rehabilitation. I want to concentrate on the area of health and safety in the workplace.

As an educator some years back, I worked in a young offenders facility and experienced a situation where I was accosted by six or seven young offenders. I was locked in a room while the offenders took off. It was a very scary experience and certainly affected my work in that facility for the two years I was there. As a result of this, a backup social worker was assigned to the classroom situation in all cases where there were teaching staff.

I recall another incident where a young offender, wielding a metal bar which he had ripped off the wall window of the facility, was on a rampage, threatening the facility itself and also threatening the staff. It was a nasty situation. The only solution was to open the door and allow that young offender to take off and then have the police apprehend him.

I point out these two incidents because of the kinds of stress that people who are involved in this kind of work are under on a day-to-day basis. I believe the stress of people working in the correctional system is the highest possible level of stress on a day-to-day basis. I see it as a stress level in excess of that of those who are employed as police officers or firefighters. Therefore, I believe we have to address that kind of situation and provide means to alleviate it.

In that context it is difficult for me to view a situation where a young, inexperienced worker would be left alone in an open-custody facility, given the background we have heard in the House, where a warning was issued as to the potential dangers that could occur, and these cautionary measures were removed after a week. But to have a young, inexperienced worker alone at night in an open-custody facility, obviously is unacceptable.

My concern is not only for the staff but also for the youths themselves. In the last couple of weeks, it has been reported to me that in the Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre we have had incidents of 300 to 400 assaults per year by young offenders on each other. This again is something that contributes to the extraordinary tension the staff must work under: to be involved in a situation where they may have to protect themselves or may have to protect other people in their care in a constantly hostile environment. It is something that needs to be addressed.

I questioned the minister last week in terms of the security in open-custody facilities in the province. I drew to the minister’s attention my concern that with the low wages -- individuals earning over $10,000 less than their counterparts in the public sector -- there was very low staff morale and an extraordinarily high turnover -- 100 per cent turnover in a year -- and that this in itself represented a security threat to the workers themselves and to the community.

In response, the minister said: “I would not accept the premise the honourable member’s question is based on, that there is inadequate security. In my judgement, that is not the case.... I will not concur with him that we have a security problem in those facilities. I have visited them. I have been in contact with the members...I have certainly not seen any evidence that there is a security problem.”

I think when we talk to individuals who are involved in open-custody facilities, we know, in fact, that there is a security problem.

The minister today, in his remarks in the House -- and I would like to go back to a couple of these -- talked in terms of the Young Offenders Act, in support of it as a better manner of operating than the Juvenile Delinquents Act. I concur with the minister. The act is basically good and the spirit behind the act is good. The minister went on to say, “I do not think we have given as much attention to protection of the public as we should.” I agree with the minister.

This is very different from the minister’s answers of just one week ago. I think there is a very distinct difference, and I do not think we can send out conflicting messages and remain credible. Last week there was no problem. Today there is a problem and the minister is going to report back in 90 days. I believe that a public inquiry is necessary. It is not good enough to report back in 90 days while individuals man these facilities on occasion singlehandedly.

In the time that remains to me, I want to talk very briefly of the necessity for public or community support for these open-custody residences. During the estimates debate I made this remark: “One thing is for certain” -- and I am talking in terms of having open-custody facilities in residential neighbourhoods -- “Resolution of these difficult matters will not come about by osmosis. The ministry cannot simply remain a ghostly figure in the background and expect open-custody facilities in residential areas to materialize. The ministry and the government will have to take a leadership role that has been sadly lacking in the past.”

It is my belief that this is the reality. It is an unfortunate set of circumstances that tragedy prods us into action. How can we go along to a community and say, “We want to open an open-custody facility in your neighbourhood”? How can we go along to that community unless we give them assurances that the highest possible degree of security will take place within that residence?

The message that is going out to the community is very conflicting. On the one hand, we recognize the absolute need to integrate into the community rehabilitative programs for young offenders, but we can never expect to have community support for this kind of initiative as long as we are not taking every conceivable precaution in order to ensure that there is protection for the staff, for the community at large and indeed for the residents themselves, the young offenders.

As we move into the days ahead, I believe the minister and this government can take one very concrete step that will indicate to the public and also to the staff of these facilities that they recognize the magnitude of this problem. That step is that immediately, in every facility dealing with young offenders, there be a minimum of two staff on duty at all times. I think this is a response that the community would expect and response that our staff working in these facilities must have.

I talked in terms of health and safety workplace. Most of my remarks today centred on the stress that is involved with institutions. We can never completely remove that stress, but I think we can take measures to reduce the stress by providing the kind of staffing ratios, the kind of support systems which lead people working in this system to recognize the fact that we are supportive and we want the best possible system.

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Mr. Runciman: I have some brief comments with respect to the motion before the House this afternoon. It is a very important one and I certainly want to join my colleagues in expressing our great sympathy to all the families involved in the tragic incidents.

I think I read in one of the morning papers that the Ontario Public Service Employees Union was blaming the government for one of the tragedies, the girl being killed in the group home Saturday evening, and was laying the blame at the foot of the government. Personally, I do not agree with that at all. I think that was a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the union.

There is no question in my mind that if there is blame to be assessed here, it has to be on Young Offenders Act itself; the fact that we have got ourselves into this situation because of a federal initiative. There is no question about that, but at the same time, I believe provincial governments in this country were perhaps less forthcoming than they should have been at the time the act was brought forward.

I know with respect to the government of Ontario that there was certainly resistance for at least two years -- the minister made reference to that earlier in the day during question period -- and some very serious concerns the government at that time had about this act’s impact upon society at large and in terms of the costing formulas and the funds that would be transferred from the federal level to assist in meeting the requirements of the act.

Earlier in the day, I was in my office and caught a brief comment by the member for Mississauga North, making reference to supporting the principles of the Young Offenders Act. I am one of those who would have some difficulty with that and suggest that perhaps it is an appropriate time to go back to square one and look at what the federal and provincial governments hope to accomplish through implementation of the Young Offenders Act, if needed there was sufficient thought given to the very serious ramifications we would face as a result.

We talked about the penalty provisions. I know that is a concern of many. We are seeing very clear evidence in the press on almost a day-to-day basis that many young people in society are laughing at the penalties that face them for committing serious crimes in society, the fact that they are looking at a maximum for a capital crime of three years’ incarceration and for less serious crimes even less significant penalties; with complete inability of the authorities to reveal identities so that there is a cloak of anonymity, which again removes that societal penalty, if you will, of your name being published in the paper, colleagues, workers and so on knowing that you indeed have been found responsible for a crime. We have removed that element. We have made the penalties very modest indeed.

We see concerns being expressed about the increasing prevalence of youth gangs in Metropolitan Toronto. A Globe and Mail article a week ago made reference to the fact that one of the things spurring these people into formation of groups like this and engaging in criminal activities is the Young Offenders Act itself; that these people are very much appreciative of the fact that the penalties they face are modest indeed.

With respect to the provincial administration of the act, I am not sure whether it is indeed appropriate to have it fall to two ministries. I know this argument was being made back in 1983 and 1984. You seem to have those turf wars in government; they seem to be unavoidable. But I have always wondered about the appropriateness of having a certain group of young offenders fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Correctional Services and another group, based on age I gather, fall under the aegis of the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

Perhaps it is time, in terms of efficiency, that we looked at having young offenders fall under one ministry. If indeed we are facing some tough times in terms of dollars available for the provincial government for additional staffing requirements and what have you, that may be one way in which additional funds could be freed up to address those particular concerns while at the same time not impacting on the global budget of the ministry with respect to that particular area of concern.

I want to touch briefly on a problem in eastern Ontario which I have raised on a couple of occasions, and that is the commitment made by the previous government in 1985 to the establishment of a secure young offenders facility in eastern Ontario. A study had been carried out over a two-year period with respect to the appropriate location for such a facility and a decision was announced in June 1985, several weeks prior to the defeat of the government in the Legislature. Subsequent to that, this government has declined to follow through on that commitment and has in fact placed police forces in the southeastern region of eastern Ontario in some degree of difficulty with respect to having adequate facilities to house young offenders.

There is no question in my mind that the decision was a political one. That is indeed unfortunate, because it has, as I said, a very negative impact on policing and the police forces’ ability to house young offenders in appropriate secure facilities in eastern Ontario. Of course, I have on a couple of occasions placed on the record, with the Minister of Correctional Services, concerns expressed by the chiefs of police in Kingston, Brockville, Ottawa, Cornwall and Belleville, centres throughout that whole eastern Ontario area, about the fact that there is not a secure young offenders facility within easy commuting distance of most of those municipalities and the problems that is presenting to their police forces.

The member for Burlington South went on at length; he is very familiar with the situation in respect of the Halton region, the concerns in that area and police notification. It seems to me that it is symptomatic of something that has been happening in society over the past 10 or 15 years, and that is the proclivity of politicians to put emphasis on increasing rights in society and a gradual diminution of emphasis on responsibilities to go along with those increasing rights.

We are seeing it certainly in the young offenders area. Concerns were expressed in this House on occasion about the increasing rights for people housed in psychiatric facilities in this province. Among the major concerns which I drew to the attention of the House some time ago were the ability, the right of individuals in psychiatric hospitals to refuse treatment and the definition of competence. It is a general trend, both at the federal and provincial levels, and it should be cause for concern by legislators. It is certainly cause for concern by the general public.

In any event, I want to convey again my sincere regrets and condolences to the families involved in the tragic incidents over the past number of days. Our hearts go out to them.

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Mrs. Sullivan: I think we all share the feeling of hopelessness over the senseless deaths of six young people this past weekend. The tragic death of Krista Sepp and the deaths of five teenagers who escaped from custody at the York Detention Centre have resulted in serious questions which must be addressed.

The minister earlier today spoke of the questioning by Ontario citizens about the concept of community-based services, particularly as it relates to group homes. Certainly the events of the past weekend highlight that public confidence in our system of community care is critical to its ongoing operation.

We are speaking today in many ways of how we, as a society, are grappling with achieving a delicate balance in principles. We have to consider the right of society to be assured of security and we must also consider the rights and needs of group home residents.

They have a right to live in their community and to expect a level of counselling and support that will assist them in reaching their personal potential or in resolving their personal crisis. It is also important that we try to restore some confidence in the system.

I believe people in whose areas group homes are located must be guaranteed that the homes will be operated with an appropriate level of security, not only for the residents and staff, but also for the community at large. As well, the community has a right to know what category of people will be occupying group homes, whether, for example, physically disabled, emotionally troubled or young offenders.

A report prepared in 1983 for the then Provincial Secretary for Social Development, Margaret Birch, states that the purpose of a group home is to “provide an environment in which people with special needs or disabilities may gain or regain the capacity for full or partial independence. If the group home and its residents remain isolated from the rest of the community, that purpose simply cannot be achieved.”

This means residents need to be a part of the community. They need to be able to use the libraries, schools, parks and recreational facilities and other amenities. They need work opportunities and training opportunities in the community as well. Just as a community must be comfortable with its group home neighbours, so must the residents of the home be received as part of the community.

The ultimate goal is to have the group home be seen as just another family in the community. For most homes, many of the concerns about crime and safety levels, property maintenance, noise and activity and other questions of interest to the community are answered before the home is even established, in the process of approving the home in the community.

Today, we are turning to the system of support that we provide to young offenders. We are looking at the rights and needs of these young people, including retaining close family ties, and that often means living near their own homes. Young people in our care need the benefits of supportive counselling. They need to be involved in community activities that can result in leading more productive and useful lives.

In the past, as we know, secure custody for young offenders in the care of the Ministry of Community and Social Services has been mainly provided by training schools. Many of these were a considerable distance from the offender’s home and community. Today, we believe, and I think all members from all parties would agree, that those placed in a community setting, given the appropriate supervision and support, can be helped to deal with their personal problems and their attitudes and be assisted to lead more productive lives.

The activities of the Ministry of Community and Social Services have supported this vision of the rehabilitative service. The ministry’s plan has been to replace the old training schools with the development of a network of smaller and more numerous secure custody and group home services.

Under the old approach, young offenders isolated from the real community in large institutions had little help, little chance to develop a sense of responsibility. Large institutions by their very nature discourage the development of individuality, self-reliance and independent problem solving. Through community care, we hope to help these young people develop the skills, the independence and the sense of responsibility they need to become productive members of the community and society in general.

We are continuing to strive to meet our objectives for young offenders in a manner that recognizes their legal rights and civil liberties, in a manner that recognizes their rights as citizens of this province and this country to be treated with fairness and justice.

To achieve this, we must look to the whole community. We must ask the community to accept responsibility for the care of its own. They in turn must have trust that the networks and the services will be able to provide that care in a responsible way. That trust between the communities and the people who live there is a trust that means agencies will be well run, a trust that compassionate decisions will be made on behalf of our young people and a trust that the security of the community will be respected and maintained. Surely that is what all of us want: to live in a society that values equality, compassion and justice.

I am therefore encouraged by the minister’s statement today. He has recognized the system can and must be improved. He expresses our confidence in the agencies currently providing community services. I believe the minister’s intention to review the security measures in place at all secure detention, secure custody and observation and detention homes directly operated by the ministry, and to review the staffing guidelines in facilities housing young offenders, is just. Clearly, these reviews are intended to further support the community services system.

The minister is saying that we are not regimented, that the system can be improved. The system must earn and continue to hold the community’s confidence. This government has responded to the community’s concerns as a result of the action of the minister. I hope that the confidence of the community in the system will continue and that we will not see a dreadful kind of backlash that is innovated and initiated through fear.

Along with other members of the House, I want to express my condolences to the families and friends of the young people who died over the weekend. As parents and as people who are trying to come to terms with these events, it was a sad time indeed.

Mr. Morin-Strom: Certainly, this is a very sad day for all of us in the Legislature. This has been a very difficult weekend for people in the Sepp family and for all people in the community of Sault Ste. Marie. This kind of a tragedy is one that will stay with us for years to come. We are seriously concerned about the circumstances surrounding this incident and hope that as a government and as elected representatives, we can work together to ensure the system is made to work so that tragedies such as this do not have to happen again in our province’s future.

At this time, I would like to extend my personal sympathies to the Sepp family with respect to this tragedy, a second tragedy in their family, one that I know they find very difficult to accept, one that has shaken everyone in their family and their friends, and indeed, all of our community of Sault Ste. Marie.

In recognizing its responsibility with respect to dealing with young offenders, I think the Legislature is taking a proper course in terms of focusing attention on this problem. In calling for this emergency debate today, we think we have had an opportunity to get an initial airing of some of the concerns and issues with respect to the planning and the programming of these facilities across the province.

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It would appear there is a serious focus problem regarding funding policies and programs that the Ministry of Community and Social Services as well as the Ministry of Correctional Services is putting in place in order to deal with the difficult situation facing youngsters in our society today. Incidents such as those that occurred on the weekend result in a lack of public confidence in our systems of care and control of these young offenders. We, as a Legislature, have to address these issues and see that improvements are put in place with respect to the Young Offenders Act itself and then with how we deal with that act in terms of implementing policies of this government.

The tragedy that occurred in Midland is really one of horrendous proportions. It is hard to understand how a new graduate, a 21-year-old woman less than two weeks in the workforce, without experience in this type of work, can be given absolute and total control of a facility and be left alone with those who need our care. Surely, we must be going in the wrong direction when we see the lack of protections not just for the public but for the staff of these types of institutions.

The concept of community-based facilities is a good concept in principle, but it must have protections in place to ensure that the public and staff in the facilities are protected and that these facilities are providing the best possible care and treatment of youngsters who are in trouble and who need our assistance in order that they may be reintegrated into our society as productive members of Ontario.

These kinds of facilities cannot be set up as a means of saving money, to contract out services that really should be under the purview and under the control of the government as a whole. The concept of turning over responsibility for correctional services to private organizations, private individuals, to deal with the kinds of serious problems many of these young offenders face is really a direction that has to be seriously questioned.

I know that our leader, the member for York South (Mr. B. Rae), has today called for a full public inquiry into this incident and into how these facilities are operated in Ontario. The minister has made a statement today with respect to his own internal investigation which is going to be conducted.

I commend him for conducting an investigation and getting that under way immediately, but I think we have to go beyond just internal investigations with government personnel looking at their own programs, with the same correctional people who instituted the policies and procedures that were in place reviewing those policies and procedures now. We have to have a full public airing of this matter, one in which we can get all the expertise possible and allow for a full public debate and review as to the direction in which we should be going with these programs in the future.

Surely one of the aspects that is called for most seriously is the serious concern with respect to the dangers, risks and the emotional trauma that comes with having to work in this kind of facility. These workers need greater protections from the province of Ontario. We certainly need to have improvements to our Occupational Health and Safety Act in order to provide workers with protection so that they are not subjected to the kinds of risks Krista Sepp faced in her second week on the job.

Workers must have the right to be able to assess the work conditions the risks involved and be able to refuse to enter into the kind of situation Krista Sepp faced. Workers should not be forced into a kind of position in which one inexperienced person, on his or her own, has complete responsibility for individuals who are in care, individuals whose backgrounds that worker perhaps has not been made fully aware of.

We have to have protection in terms of better training and security measures in these facilities so that the staff of young offenders’ homes can feel some comfort and some camaraderie with their fellow staff, feel they are working together to provide for public safety, and of course feel they have the tools to be able to provide for those youngsters they are trying to care for.

They are trying to do a job for all of us. Krista Sepp was trying her hardest to do a job for all of us. I ask that we give them the tools so we can get on with doing the job that has to be done.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): There are a few moments left, sufficient for the member for High Park-Swansea.

Mr. Fleet: In the short time I have left before the conclusion of this debate, let me first of all say that the actions announced today by the government are ones I support very strongly. I think pressing for reform of the Young Offenders Act at the level of the federal government is essential for reasons that were provided earlier today, as well as the review of security procedures and staffing guidelines.

I also want to commend the government, as I understand the reasoning, for saying that we will take every precaution reasonable in all the circumstances and that safety does come first, both for the public and for workers. It is a paramount concern. There is also, as has been eloquently addressed by members all around this House, a social justice goal of trying to provide help for those people who, for whatever reason, seem unable to manage for themselves.

It is a social responsibility for all communities. Certainly, no community has a moral right to refuse to help those who need that kind of assistance. There ought not to be concentrations of things like group homes exclusively in one area or a concentration of our attention, frankly, only on areas that involve corrections.

One of the problems in the communities is, quite frankly, a great deal of confusion about what group homes are and what halfway houses are; the fact that group homes frequently deal with other types of individuals, people who are, for instance, developmentally handicapped or foster children.

I would suggest that there is nothing which so feeds fear and so attacks the confidence in the system as ignorance and misinformation. We need to do more to try to help people learn about how it does work, as well as to focus on improving the system. I share that dedication. I know the Minister of Community and Social Services believes that very deeply and I again commend him for his efforts.

In light of the time, although I would like to make further comment, I will move the adjournment of the debate.

The Acting Speaker: In accordance with standing order 37, this debate is concluded without the necessity of a motion to adjourn.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.

6 février 1989