Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, members. I'm Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.'s representative for children and youth and president of the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Advocates.
As you know, beside me is Sylvie Godin from the Quebec commission. We also have with us in the gallery a number of the individual child and youth advocates from across Canada. We have the child and youth advocate from Manitoba with us today, Bonnie Kocsis. We have representatives from the Ontario child and youth advocate office. We have the child commissioner from Nova Scotia, Dwight Bishop. We have the child advocate from Newfoundland and Labrador, Carol Chafe, and we have the child advocate from the Yukon, Andrew Nieman. I understand we'll be joined shortly by the child and youth advocate from New Brunswick, Bernard Richard.
So we have a bit of a delegation with us here today. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Sylvie and I will share our 10 minutes. Sylvie will speak in French, and I will speak primarily in English.
Our organization is an alliance of the government-appointed child and youth advocates from across Canada. Nine of the 10 members of our organization are independent advocates or independent officers of the legislative assembly; they provide support to children and youth, and particularly have something of a mandate, in the area of either advocacy or review, for youth criminal justice in our respective provinces and territories. I know that a few of our advocates have already made submissions to the committee in writing or have appeared here, including Mr. Bernard Richard and Madame Godin, as well as Mr. Elman. On behalf of B.C., I made a written submission.
We're very pleased to be here on behalf of our national body. Although our roles vary and our statutory mandates vary, we generally provide some direct advocacy supports to children and youth in the justice system, and we also work on systemic advocacy to make improvements to the systems for children and youth. Essentially our organizations promote better outcomes and the use of evidence to inform policy and encourage a more inclusive and responsive system of supports for youth and especially for vulnerable youth. In particular, in our various legislative assemblies where we work, we attempt to give voice to Canadians who by virtue of their age and personal circumstances are often not heard or represented in legislative and policy-making processes.
Through our participation in the council we identify issues of mutual concern. This is the background to our presentation today. Our collective experience as advocates and our review of the evidence leads us to make a strong recommendation that this committee be encouraged to take a position to step back from Bill C-4 and reconsider the impact of the bill on children and youth.
The current Youth Criminal Justice Act recognizes the important and interdependent objectives of protection of the public and rehabilitation of youth, and we strongly concur that both of these objectives are important. We see no evidence that shows that the proposed amendments to the act will decrease youth crime or that they will increase the safety of the Canadian public. We understand that any incident of violent crime is egregious in its devastating effects on families, communities, and the public at large, and as a society we certainly have to do our best to prevent such incidents. However, despite our distress at such incidents, we must not respond by locking up more youth and handing out more adult sentences to youth. Research demonstrates that doing so is not an effective strategy. Jurisdictions that take that approach typically have worse outcomes for children and youth across the spectrum and increase the chances that a youth will become more fixed on, or choose, a criminal path.