Justice committee  I will. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would also like to express our gratitude for the opportunity to be here. Justice for Children and Youth is a legal clinic that addresses all of the legal regimes that affect children. In fact, we're Canada's only clinic with the breadth of the ty

Justice committee  Justice for Children and Youth is a legal aid clinic. We are funded primarily, not 100% but primarily, by Legal Aid Ontario. And because we're a specialty clinic—it may be more than one area of law, but it's specializing in the laws that affect youth—we have a mandate to do test

Justice committee  The answer is no, it was not—

Justice committee  I was going to say yes, but when you broadened it to “these test cases” we sometimes do have court challenges--

Justice committee  We have obtained court challenges funding in the past.

Justice committee  Yes. That was the repeal of section 43 of the Criminal Code, the corporal punishment offence. That was funded by court challenges.

Justice committee  Yes, we have.

Justice committee  My suggestion was at least to begin with the public education campaign. I really believe that people are—in fact, you've heard it from others—confused about what the laws actually are in Canada. They're complicated and difficult. I believe that young people themselves need to fe

Justice committee  That would be the right answer. In fact, when he was an undergraduate law student, he wrote a paper saying that there should be such an organization. He didn't, in fact, legally create it, but it for sure was his idea, and he does talk about it with pride, I'll say.

Justice committee  I'm going to say yes.

Justice committee  No.

Justice committee  We have not. I have not actually written a brief or a clear position on that. We have paid attention to the desirability of creating safe environments for young people to testify and for their evidence to be given the same weight as adult evidence. That part we have paid attentio

Justice committee  If I might point out, there are lots of kids in the same secondary school who are five years apart. I think it's important to know that especially people coming from different countries and different education systems may arrive at different grade levels and they may think of the

Justice committee  You are understanding me correctly. I am saying that from the point of view of Justice for Children and Youth, a rebuttable presumption is preferable to an absolute rule, because we are all trying to prevent exploitation, and it's hard to get hold of, so we use age as a proxy, no

Justice committee  And I certainly don't need to identify my own experience either. I believe that the age at which young people first engage in sexual activity is fairly culturally based. Young people often do what their peers do. They often— Well, here's an example that doesn't even occur in C