GN a bad parent, judge finds

JOHN THOMPSON

The Government of Nunavut behaved like a negligent parent when it came to providing badly-needed social services to a 17-year-old orphan last year, a judge ruled last Friday.

That’s got to stop, warned Justice Beverly Browne, in a judgment that calls for Nunavut’s Child and Family Services Act to be amended within one year.

If it isn’t, “then the matter could be referred back to me, and I will consider reading into the legislation the appropriate provisions that will ensure our young people are well and properly cared for by [Health and Social Services],” Browne wrote in her judgment, released last Friday.

“We have many who are homeless, parentless and poor and are not being adequately served by the present legislation,” Browne wrote.

Health and Social Services staff are obliged to care for children in need under the age of 16. And when residents reach 18, and become adults, they are eligible for social assistance and public housing.

But in the case of a 17-year-old orphan from Iqaluit, named only J.S. in the judgment, Browne said it’s clear the government discriminates against residents who are legally neither child nor adult, by providing significantly fewer social services.

J.S.’s parents died years ago. Without extended family able to support him, J.S. became a ward of the state at the age of seven, under the care of child and family services.

Since 2002, J.S. acquired more than a dozen criminal charges, mostly for thefts and break and enters. J.S.’s behavioral problems pushed him from foster home to foster home, and into the young offender’s centre, where he served three sentences.

“He is perhaps his own worst enemy,” Browne wrote.

Last December, when J.S. was released from the youth detention centre after serving a four-month sentence for break and enter, he had no place to call home, and no youth shelter in the territory to turn to.

Eventually, a justice department employee took him in, temporarily, for Christmas.

When teens such as J.S. turn 16, they may apply for a voluntary support services agreement, which covers rent, food and clothing. But these agreements put the onus on applicants to find a home for themselves, and to go to work or school full-time.

That’s not enough, Browne said.

“It was not appropriate for HSS to wash its hands of this young man when he turned 16,” Browne wrote. “Parental obligations do not simply start when a young person walks out of the jail and into HSS office, hoping that housing, jobs and other basic necessities of life will be provided on short notice.”

“The government must identify and ensure that the appropriate offers of food, clothing, housing education and employment are made to these young people just as parents would do,” Browne continued.

To support her case, Browne cites United Nations conventions which affirm the rights of children, as well as the GN’s Pinasuaqtavut document, which states: “We must provide for those who are not able to care for themselves; We must provide options and opportunities which build the strengths of individuals, families and communities.”

J.S.’s criminal behavior must have discouraged HSS staff, Browne wrote.

“However, being discouraged about the behaviour of a young person does not terminate the parenting responsibility in any family… and does not take away the parenting responsibility of the Director [of HSS], who has had the care of the child since he was 7 years old.”

In the end, a support agreement for J.S. was negotiated in May 2006. By then, he had moved to Montreal, a place he had never visited before, to live with an extended family member. That same month, J.S. turned 18.

While the court ruling may have come too late for J.S., Chris Debicki, the lawyer who represented him, said he hopes the decision will improve the lives of children in similar cases to come.

“I also hope that this is the end of the legal battle and that there will be no further delays in solving this problem and helping some of our community’s most vulnerable kids,” he wrote in an email.

Right now, the GN has 21 similar agreements with young people aged between 16 and 18.