Mr. Speaker, I would like to preface my remarks on this bill to help families in need by reiterating that I rely on my legal background every day in carrying out my duties as a member of Parliament.
Early in my career, the time I spent working for legal aid right after passing the bar was a true education. I learned so much working there. My regards to all of my colleagues at the Sept-Îles legal aid office.
Returning to the matter at hand, in 2007, six months after I joined legal aid, one of my first cases involved a young man who had been taken hostage in 1997. Given the relatively small population of Sept-Îles, the incident, which took place in a local high school, received significant media attention. Other young people, including me—I was not very old at the time—were aware of the problem because we knew the young man involved. He was taken hostage in a classroom.
Another young person, not much older than high school age, but who was in CEGEP, went off the deep end—pardon the expression—and decided to go into a high school classroom with two jerry cans of gas, a Rambo-style hunting knife and a pellet gun. He decided to take the entire class hostage and tied the students up with tape. My client decided to intervene and was stabbed and suffered a punctured lung. So it was rather serious.
I remember this event, because I was in CEGEP at the time. When word got out around Sept-Îles, I went to the hospital to see how the young man was doing. That is when I saw how distraught his parents were. They were completely shaken and without any means.
This event came back to me when I began litigating in 2007. The same young man, whom I knew, came to see me in my office. The case still had not been settled 10 years later. The case had gone to an organization in Quebec known as IVAC, which stands for indemnisation aux victimes d'actes criminels—basically an organization that processes applications for compensation for victims of crime. The case was being challenged and had gone before Quebec's administrative tribunal. It was a question of anatomicophysiological deficit, or APD. There were differences of opinion.
My first instinct was to send my client for further psychological examination, because he was suffering serious repercussions. Thus, another psychiatrist met with him in the Quebec City area. This increased his APD diagnosis by a few percentage points, so we were able to reach a settlement in the end.
I wanted to share this particular case with you because there had been a 10-year delay and when the incident happened, the parents had no resources whatsoever. I know that, because the young man's father, whom I saw that day at the hospital, was completely distraught. Very little support was offered to the parents by either the school system or the government.
I am talking about this case here today simply to illustrate that it is no secret that these terrible incidents happen on a regular basis.
What is interesting about this bill is that it is a pragmatic response to the financial difficulties experienced by vulnerable families as a result of tragic and fortuitous events. That is why my party supports the proposed measures, since they would ease the added financial burden on parents in need.
There is talk of integrity and threats to the physical integrity of a child. I say that parents are often distraught. But this is not just when a young person is the victim of a crime. When I worked in a legal aid office and in my own law firm, I saw the same type of reaction. I represented young people who were under psychiatric care. They were often children admitted into psychiatric care because they presented with symptoms of toxic psychosis. In my community, Uashat-Maliotenam, and also in the city of Sept-Îles, there is a serious problem right now with methamphetamines, commonly known as speed. Some young people are inhaling them by turning them into powder. This is commonly referred to as sniffing speed. They inhale four or five of these pills. After sniffing four or five speed pills, a person decompensates and becomes incoherent and violent. That is not always the case, but it can happen. These young people end up under psychiatric care, and the parents are distraught.
I noticed that there was a lack of resources available to them, because the health and safety of these young people as well as their physical integrity were in jeopardy.
When I was working on my speech for today, I was reminded of these things from my past experience at the itinerant court and the civil court. Often, these were prison custody cases heard in civil court. I was reminded of these things, and I make mention of them today. I believe that it is important to share this information with the Canadian public.
In passing, I would like to point out the innovative nature of the compensation for parents of missing children, a measure that addresses a deplorable reality in Canadian society.
I would like to talk about missing children. I agree that the presumption that a crime has been committed can be problematic. However, in many communities, including aboriginal communities, the disappearance of children is a fairly widespread and growing phenomenon, when we compare the number of aboriginal young people who go missing to the total number of people in the community.
This type of measure will most likely be well received by aboriginal communities across the country. When I was working on this file, I was reminded of the posters of young Maisy Odjick and other young people from aboriginal communities. A criminal investigation is most often launched if suspicious circumstances exist. Many cases of missing children involve a criminal investigation, a police investigation. This always depends on the analysis of the judge and arbitrator, the person who makes the final decision as to the moment at which suspicions of a crime or criminal activity come into play.
I hope that the members opposite agree, but in my opinion, this criterion would be easily applicable. In most cases, when a child goes missing, there is a criminal investigation and suspicions can therefore be confirmed. It remains to be seen how these proposed measures will actually be implemented.
That being said and despite the highly commendable nature of the proposed measures, we must reassess the relevance of withdrawing money from the employment insurance fund for parents of critically ill children given that this fund has a cumulative deficit of $9 billion, which is not just pocket change.