Justice reform must include child welfare reform
Scour the news in recent months and you will find stories about a Supreme Court ruling that gave time limits to trials, both provincially and federally.
In most cases — they're framed like this one from Montreal where a first-degree murder charge was dismissed because the trial took too long.
This week, justice ministers from 5 provinces affected by the top court's ruling gathered to ask the federal government to address this problem. The Canadian Bar Association has also weighed in, creating a list of suggestions that could help ease the overburden on our justice systems.
But law professor Rebecca Bromwich thinks that reforming child welfare laws across the country should be added to that list.
We know some numbers that should be scandalous and appalling. There are about, give or take, 64,000 youth and children in care in the child welfare systems across Canada's provinces and territories...but those youth are making up about half of the people seen in the youth criminal justice courts. They should, demographically make up about one per cent, so this is a huge disproportion.- Rebecca Bromwich
Bromwich says that these kids are often trapped in a pipeline that leads them from the welfare system to the criminal justice system.
"Not only are these kids in care disproportionately represented, if you look at who those kids are, they are vastly disproportionately of Indigenous dissent. About 48% of the kids in care nationwide are of Indigenous dissent...and if we look at the demographic disproportions at all stages…Indigenous people are over represented there too, so we see the same demographic bulges all across from child welfare apprehensions all the way through the criminal justice system, into federal penitentiaries"
In Ontario, the provincial government is currently in the process of revamping its child welfare laws and Bromwich and the Canadian Bar Association have submitted a request to have a provision added to mirror the same language that already exists in the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
"There is a provision in the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which came into force in 2003. Section 29 of that act says that youth court judges and youth court authorities shall not detain people in custody as a substitute for appropriate child protection, mental health or other services...there is no mirror provision to that in the child protection statutes across the provinces and territories."
Bromwich says the addition, if approved, would force child protection systems across the country to develop new strategies that don't involve calling in the authorities.
As for concerns about letting young offenders off too easy, Bromwich says what she is suggesting isn't meant to address serious crimes like homicide, but rather the vast majority of crimes that youth committ: theft, property crime, common assault and mischief.
They are particularly problematic in the context of kids in care and this is why: I am a mom, I have 4 kids, if they hit each other, I'm going to have a sanction in my family home. What happens is if youth hit each other in a child welfare setting, they very well may be arrested for that, police very well may be called.- Rebecca Bromwich
To Bromwich, a change of legislation is just one step in a long list of changes needed.
"We will need integration between systems. There are going to have to be local and sustainable initiatives, so it's not that this one legislative provision would change everything. It's what we're asking for right now because it is one piece of a bigger puzzle, a complicated puzzle."