Jonathan Genest-Jourdain

[First Nations Financial Transparency Act, June 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

There is a kind of unity among various communities. However, there are differences across Canada, including linguistic differences, that are problematic. I have looked into it. People in my community are able to understand the Cree, the Algonquin and the Attikamekw peoples. There are linguistic differences, but everyone shares a common understanding.

I think that older people are better able to understand each other. This has been observed in the past. After 25,000 years of territorial occupation, I think there have been contacts and exchanges. There are also economic, political and social interests that vary from one community to the next. There is a kind of unity right now, particularly between the Innu and the Naskapi. Looking at my community and neighbouring communities, that is what I see now.

Of course, there is the AFNQL and the national Assembly of First Nations, but people often express differing opinions. That is fine. We cannot expect to achieve consensus in every area and on every issue.

[First Nations Financial Transparency Act, June 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. After spending one year in this place, I humbly believe that measures concerning aboriginal affairs put forward by the Conservatives are just window dressing, as was somewhat the case for the meeting they organized, which was supposed to be historic and inclusive. It was just a photo op, an opportunity to get good press and look good.

When we take a closer look and even look back at what has actually been done, it is easy to see that it was window dressing and that the measures were proposed simply to score political points.

I highly doubt that the Conservatives will show any particular interest in the recommendations that may ultimately be made by the communities with respect to this bill which, by the way, is quite problematic.

[First Nations Financial Transparency Act, June 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her question.

I can already guarantee that this bill will not be received warmly since Canada's aboriginal communities are rather inclined to rise up against any interventionist initiative that interferes with their governance.

We are in a period of assertion and self-determination, and that is our ultimate goal. The communities are putting these strategies forward. This measure is paternalistic, which is nothing new really, but this time the government has gone too far. Believe me, the communities are not going to look very kindly on this.

[First Nations Financial Transparency Act, June 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am very excited to start my speech on the financial transparency of first nations.

From the various speeches I have been regularly putting online, my constituents will be aware that I tend towards lifting the veil of darkness surrounding a number of issues specific to the first nations of Canada. These issues must be made public. After 500 years of a shared existence, the entire Canadian population is ready and able to learn about these realities that are too often ignored and forgotten.

There is a growing anti-establishment movement around the world. I am talking about international politics, but this is also evident at the local level. Just look at Quebec, where the public has been mobilizing. Of course, it is an international movement, since we are also seeing an anti-establishment movement in Europe, where people are questioning their government's actions and measures. What I will try to show here is that, of course, this increased assertiveness is universal, and that aboriginal communities are also experiencing the same problems and the same type of public mobilization.

Over the past year, we have discussed many topics related to my riding. My riding even received media coverage, which has rarely happened in the past, other than once, about 10 years ago, when the community mobilized and became more assertive.

A few months ago, the newspapers covered a specific situation involving a protest and the presence of the riot squad in my community. A roadblock had been set up on Highway 138. The situation did not last long, but it required police intervention.

People were protesting a hydroelectric development project promoted by the provincial authorities and supported by the community's management organization, the band council. And so, the people took action. Their actions at that time showed that they were rejecting certain policies and decisions made at the local level. The members of a first nations community were making a new socio-economic and political statement and questioning the action taken by government and local authorities with regard to decisions made locally.

When we analyze the changes and the political turmoil happening in the communities we can infer that there is a socio-political awakening and a mobilization among aboriginal people. This wave of assertiveness is invariably accompanied by internal pressure on community administrative bodies and demands for accountability in the management of the community's shared heritage. When I talk about shared heritage for the Innu people, I am talking about the land and the fisheries and wildlife resources.

As I have said many times, my riding covers over 200,000 km² and is the traditional territory of the Innu and Naskapi people. I make special mention of this because it is important to understand that the band councils, the community management organizations, are a creation of the Indian Act. Under this act, the authority and jurisdiction of aboriginal people extends only to reserve lands. For example, my reserve is perhaps only 2 km in diameter, which is not very big.

The reason people are protesting more and joining forces has to do with land and resource management. Band councils, community management organizations, are also concerned about traditional territory and they are acting as interlocutors with both federal and provincial governments with respect to resource development initiatives. What we are seeing now is that the people, as individuals, as aboriginals, as Innu and Naskapi, are taking a stand and making their point.

The problem is that Aboriginal Affairs has imposed a cookie-cutter approach that requires every community across Canada to have a band council with a chief and councillors.

The same model exists in the United States and other colonies. This blanket approach has been applied across Canada. My ancestors were a fundamentally nomadic people who migrated across the land for several months of the year—as many as six months a year—in small family groups of about 10 individuals. Five or six hundred years ago, my community's culture made for minimal contact with other groups.

Within those groups, there were elders, and decisions were made within each separate group. There were no chiefs or counsellors per se other than the fact that, come summer, the Innu regularly met at the river's edge to take advantage of the wind that chased away mosquitoes. It is likely that consensus decisions were made then, when many Innu got together, but most of the time, people lived in isolated groups.

That is why we have this problem now and why people are no longer supporting some of the decisions made by band councils made up of chiefs and councillors. This model is not necessarily applicable to all communities.

Based on that observation, it is possible to consider that the circumstances favouring a healthy questioning of the ruling power, combined with the current political zeitgeist in the communities in my riding and across the province, can only be a sign of innovative ideas laying the foundation for a new social contract to benefit the masses, rather than just special interest groups.

And now I will get to the heart of the matter.

Although the stated purpose of Bill C-27 is to enhance the transparency of first nations people, it is up to the people, as individuals, to take the necessary action to ensure transparency and accountability at all levels of governance in their respective nations.

What I am trying to emphasize here is that this is a contentious issue that must be addressed internally, from within these communities, concerning the management of both financial and natural resources. These decisions must be made within the communities themselves. In the past, Innu communities had a process we call “émulatoire”; it was a consensus process. When a problem arose within the clan, you simply confronted your adversary, the person with whom you had a conflict, and told that person the simple truth.

This is how things are still resolved today, and that is why the people of my community—and I will speak for all communities in Manicouagan, including Uashat, Unamen Shipu and Kawawachikamach—are able to confront their leaders and ultimately discover the truth about how resources are managed within the community.

The Conservatives are hardly in any position to demand accountability right now, since they have a very hard time sharing financial information themselves, concerning the management of this country.

I submit this respectfully.

[Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention Act, June 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is a little bittersweet for me to rise today to discuss this issue. Nevertheless, I am here to speak about the troubles that my home community is facing.

I inevitably return to my roots and talk about my community and other aboriginal communities in the country. Now, members must understand that the kind of reasoning I am using also applies to the rest of Canada.

Although I always try to distance myself or separate myself from the negative discourse surrounding the realities in Canada's aboriginal communities, after reviewing my recent speeches, I see that I tend to bring up some obscure points when I talk about the realities in the communities. What members must know is that I spent part of my life in a community that really struggled socially. This will necessarily be reflected in my speech. My colleagues have mentioned this to me, and since I am capable of introspection, I must say that these obscure points sometimes come out.

As I have said many times over the past year, my professional orientation probably has been guided and shaped by the idea of culturally appropriate social intervention. When I say, “culturally appropriate social intervention”, I refer to my criminal law practice, and also to my work in mental health.

In addition to providing legal services, I made sure that I took action, spoke to people and tried to find agreement or a way to connect with people more directly by referring to their everyday reality. That is why I was so successful with the legal aid office, where I began working when I was quite young, in 2007. As I have said before, I dealt with 400 files. Word got around quickly and people in the community asked me to help them more and more, because, in addition to providing legal services, I tried to improve their quality of life and influence everyone's future.

When I finished my bar admission course, my employer asked that I take responsibility for contentious matters involving the Innu and Naskapi communities. With time, my activities in the mental health field grew, and became a large part of my professional practice.

When I joined the legal aid office in 2007, I was assigned to the circuit court. As we travelled, I discovered that there was a rather significant demand for mental health services in my community. Rapidly, I found myself being asked to go to the psychiatric wing of the Sept-Îles hospital to meet clients who were sometimes dealing with the criminal justice system or the penal system, as well as custody orders, or custody in institutions under the Quebec Civil Code. In each of these cases, I had to specialize and reorient my career, because of the huge demand.

Now, when talking about problems and care with respect to mental health, there is always the concept of suicide, along with violent death and other elements that reveal the deterioration of the social fabric. These elements often come to the surface when clients are receiving services.

At the tender age of 24, 25, 26, I was called to work in fields that typically require specialized knowledge. The other lawyers who took these cases on had much more experience than I in the field, but I took the cases on anyway. Over the years, I gained more and more specialized knowledge. Now I can talk about Seroquel dosage and anticonvulsants because I was assigned to many of those cases. I am also familiar with the concept of toxic psychosis, which I will discuss in further detail shortly.

Inevitably, exposure to marked social dysfunction during childhood, combined with the career path I chose, influenced my understanding of social problems like suicide and associated issues. Everyone in my community has a passing familiarity with violent death.

I am not saying that this problem is the norm. Still, every time I return to Uashat, one of the first things I do is ask my family and friends whether there have been any violent deaths. By that, I mean everything from suicide to cirrhosis and overdose. That is the first thing I ask people in my community about. Invariably, they have names to add to the list. Many of the dead are people I represented in my legal practice, neighbours or friends. At times, when I call, people name others too. I do not necessarily need to go to Uashat to get that information. However, every time I return to my community, people tell me things that, while anything but banal, are part of daily life there. Children grow up intimately familiar with the atmosphere of bleakness and gloom in the community. That is part of everyday life there, and that background inevitably informs my own views.

I did a little research, and my community of Uashat won the gold medal for having the highest suicide rate in the world in 2003, as reported in Le Soleil in that same year. That is a very sad record, I know, but it simply illustrates the scope of the problem in my community.

I brought this up at a meeting of the aboriginal affairs committee. One stakeholder said that Uashat was going through a period of economic growth and increased socio-economic affirmation. However, I reminded that individual that this has always been a major problem for the community. Although, technically, there is some economic vitality, as I said in committee, in the end, it has very little impact on maintaining any quality of life or on the quality of the social fabric.

Aside from emphasizing the need for a national suicide prevention strategy, we also need to ensure that government initiatives and efforts on the ground somehow converge in order to really understand the causes and variables that will ultimately give us some answers. Not only is the suicide rate far too high—at dozens of suicides every year—but these suicides are being committed by very young people. In our communities, violent deaths are not necessarily limited to young people, but the suicide rate among youth is nevertheless especially high. Government efforts will have to address this problem. I will always be willing to work on this problem.

Aside from the fact that Canada will have no choice but to adopt a national suicide prevention strategy, I believe that particular efforts must be made to help aboriginal Canadians and aboriginal youth.

I submit this respectfully.

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, once again, in my speech regarding the bill to amend the National Defence Act, I will discuss some socio-cultural nuances that are important as we study the proposed legislation.

My experience in criminal law and, particularly, my years of professional experience in the itinerant court—the circuit court—in northern Quebec, have given me some perspective to be able to look at the underlying causes of juvenile delinquency and why young people identify with criminal organizations.

I am well aware that this bill has to do with suppressing criminal organization recruitment. I will now take my speech in another direction. I would like to discuss where the group mentality among young people comes from, and why this kind of organization appeals to young people.

I have seen first-hand the devastating consequences of targeted groups being marginalized, most often because of their ethnicity, so today I would like to discuss the highly questionable reasons why criminal organizations operate within legal jurisdictions that have a high ethnocultural population.

As I have said in the past, I worked at the legal aid office in my riding for two years. During those two years and few months, I was expected to travel with the itinerant court north of the 52nd parallel, particularly to the communities of Kawawachikamach, Matimekush and Unamen Shipu, one being a Naskapi community and the other two Innu communities.

Given my youth when I started working at the legal aid office, the young people who were facing criminal charges under the youth criminal justice system, were almost always inclined to turn to me. I learned early on to apply the principles of social intervention in the handling of my files. I soon realized that many of these young people were naturally drawn to stick together in groups out of an instinct for self-preservation, because they lacked means and parental role models. They had to turn to alternative means for their own survival and subsistence. To these young people, coming together in groups and joining forces was the obvious solution.

By now it must be clear that my argument focuses mainly on highlighting the circumstances that lead to juvenile delinquency. As members are aware, an approach based on identifying, preventing and correcting elements of deviance must be applied at the first signs of deviant behaviour in the individual.

At the time, I put a great deal of effort into social intervention with young people, because the positive impact this can have is particularly noticeable among that age group. It is less noticeable among older clients, considering the fact that individuals who have adopted a deviant or criminal lifestyle for some time are less likely to change their behaviour, depending on the age and willingness of each individual, of course.

Principles linked to an ethnocultural analysis of factors underlying the appearance of gangs of youth—street gangs—invite us to consider a number of elements having to do with the image of particular ethnic groups as they are portrayed by the mass media.

I would now like to discuss the attraction of the gangster-rapper lifestyle for young people. In my community, it is very noticeable, since many kids walk around wearing t-shirts celebrating street gangs and bearing the images of well-known rappers in the United States.

I know the media rely heavily on these images, because they are big sellers. If young people in a community on the 52nd parallel are walking around wearing these t-shirts, I imagine they are popular around the world. Since the early 1990s, the media have been promoting this African-American model. The message that is being sent and the image that is being reflected is that it is possible to live a similar lifestyle if one gets involved in crime and joins a street gang, whether it be the Bloods, the Crips or any other such gang.

The goal of all this is to sell CDs, although now, in 2012, it is more about selling the promotional material that goes along with them.

That message really resonates with young people in my community, in my riding, because the images they see in those videos often mirror their day-to-day experiences. I am not necessarily suggesting that the South Central Los Angeles lifestyle is the same as that in Uashat, but there are similarities, and that resonates with young people because they can identify with the messages those images are sending. The media therefore have some responsibility in this.

That is why it is important to stop sending young people messages that glorify the criminal lifestyle associated with street gangs. In addition, the media have to re-evaluate their portrayals of situations that exclude and marginalize a particular cultural group. I am more than happy to criticize the media.

There are newspapers in my own riding—I know that this comes up in Montreal and other places too—that, when a young Innu person commits an offence, write about “Innu youth” breaking into a business or “Innu youth” assaulting another individual. The newspapers make a point of identifying the person's ethnicity. However, if a young Quebecker commits a similar offence, there is no mention of his ethnicity. I just wanted to point that out. That kind of information ostracizes young people and further marginalizes them.

Even though gang recruitment activities have been reported across Canada, criminal organizations appear to target marginalized youth who are more likely to buy into the role and fate society has created for them. Young people who belong to targeted minority groups are more likely to be ostracized because the media have already shaped public opinion about their ethnic group.

The acceptance of this stigma and the defeatism that accompanies it makes it that much easier for these young people to adopt a group mentality and join a street gang. It is therefore essential that, when creating legislative measures to prevent the establishment of organized crime cells in the country, the government focuses on the real reasons why these small groups hold such an attraction for these young people, who have to deal with the media's negative portrayal of their ethnic group.

The adversarial conditions experienced every day by many young people from traditionally ostracized social classes are a fertile ground for the formation of groups of young people who struggle with people's negative image of their identity. I spoke about how the young people in my community came together and joined forces. It is a phenomenon that I experienced first hand, since there was a time in my life when I, too, did not have much and I turned to peers who were a bad influence. That is behind me now, but I just wanted to mention it today.

Too often, Innu and Naskapi youth, particularly those who end up in prison, could technically be considered members of street gangs. They were forced into it out of necessity or spite or ultimately, because of a lack of means. Because I grew up in this environment, I can talk only about what I experienced in my daily life and about the experiences of others that have been brought to my attention. Even having enough food to eat is a problem when you do not have a parental figure and you do not have any money. I submit this respectfully.

[Transboundary Waters Protection Act, June 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in my constant quest to convey the viewpoint of members of isolated communities, I would like to take the opportunity presented by our examination of this bill in order to inform the entire Canadian population of the destructive impact of indiscriminate extraction of natural resources in remote areas.

I represent a riding that covers over 220,000 square kilometres. It begins at the 50th parallel and goes all the way up to the 53rd parallel. It is also important to understand that my riding is completely covered by forests. There are 22 watersheds—I checked this number—in my riding. I thought it was important to share certain information that has to do with preserving the integrity of this resource.

Industrial vitality is palpable in my riding on a daily basis, as equipment, heavy machinery and workers are forced to roll through the urban centres before heading off onto the land. The urban centres are the cities of Sept-Îles and Baie Comeau. There is only one highway, highway 138. The drilling equipment used for all mining and forestry initiatives—basically, all equipment—comes through on highway 138. The road has suffered the consequences of this heavy traffic.

It is crucial that we pay more attention to the real environmental footprint of these extraction initiatives on traditional Innu and Naskapi lands. I would like to reiterate that these are traditional lands, and I will expand on these comments a little later on.

When I returned to my riding after my university studies, I did legal aid work for two years. After that, my band council, the council of the Innu Takuaikan Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam nation, approached me and offered me a position as a legal advisor to the community management organization, the band council.

Early in my mandate, I was tasked with handling consultation requests from Quebec's provincial department of natural resources and wildlife. About two or three times a week, my band council received consultation requests regarding various mining and forestry development initiatives.

I used the services of a cartographer, Carole Labarre, who is from my riding and my own community.

Each request was recorded and placed on a map to make it easier for everyone in the community to understand. Each initiative that targeted the traditional lands of designated families was placed on the map.

I was asked to carry out a rather summary analysis. When we looked at the map, we saw that these initiatives were mostly located in areas with water resources or watersheds. We realized that the mining industry was putting its equipment and facilities near waterways because it needs water, especially for drilling and lubricating drilling equipment. That is one of the issues I am attempting to highlight.

Over the years, and based on my observations, I criticized the poor management of natural resources by provincial authorities.

I would like to note in passing that the provinces are primarily responsible for the water within their boundaries.

By extension, the shortcomings with respect to the guidelines for and monitoring of the construction of industrial infrastructure in areas with significant water resources lead me to doubt the true extent of government efforts with respect to freshwater resource management.

To support my comments, I will refer to the specific case of Lake Kachiwiss. When I was working for my band council, it received a request for consultation regarding uranium exploration near Lake Kachiwiss, which is located about 10 km from Sept-Îles.

I was asked to go to the site with other representatives of my community to verify the extent of the real footprint of drilling and prospecting in the area. Photos were taken. We were accompanied by experts. We carried out analyses. We also took water samples, which were sent to Quebec City for analysis.

When we arrived at the site, we could clearly see that the drilling sites were very close to water supplies.

There were drilling sites in the mountains and every site was linked to a stream. We also noticed that many containers of fuel and oil had been left at the site and some had spilled. Oil had spilled into the basins on the mountainside. This is an example of the negative impact of the absence or lack of follow-up in these undertakings.

There were risks at the mining exploration stage, not to mention the risks involved in drilling to the water table, since we were talking about uranium. Radon gas might reach the water table. Things were already problematic at the exploration stage.

I thought it would have been better to address the challenges of maintaining the integrity of the surface water in the north before dealing with the issues related to bulk water exports. Even though the bill concerns bulk water exports, I wanted to highlight the fact that preserving the integrity of the resource is essential because, in the end, water is vital to human existence. To even consider economic development, we have to safeguard the quality of the resource.

I do hope that the Conservatives are duly noting what I am saying since they are in charge of the situation.

Considering how vital this prized resource is, it is essential to safeguard its integrity, and to exclude any notion of profit associated with a hypothetical economic potential. We know that this resource has economic potential. However, as I was saying, it is best to make the efforts needed to safeguard the quality of the resource. I submit this respectfully.

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the changes to employment insurance are not the only area where the Conservatives have nothing to be proud of.

Last evening, the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, with the help of the chair of the committee, refused to answer simple questions concerning his department. Because they refused to answer yesterday, I am going to give them another chance today.

Food security is a serious problem for the first nations, the Inuit and the Metis. It was even underscored by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

What is the department’s short-term plan to solve the food security problem?

[Criminal Code, June 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as I rise—in the time that has been allocated to me today—to carry out one of the duties of public office in the Canadian Parliament, I find myself able to draw on my relevant experience as a criminal defence lawyer and on empirical and theoretical legal notions.

The first thing that struck me when I began my term here in Parliament was that more of my colleagues have a background in law than in political science. I simply wanted to mention this. Young people who have their sights set on political office and are deciding what to study at university should consider studying law.

My speech today on cyberbullying will give me an opportunity to draw on my professional experience in both private practice and as a legal aid lawyer. I will briefly review my experience.

After passing the bar exam in 2006, I started working in legal aid. I articled for six months. My articling supervisor at the time was Bernard Lynch, a criminal lawyer. From 2006 to 2007, I worked on approximately 400 cases with the same employer. Much of the subject matter in those cases would today be considered cybercrime. I will put all of this into context.

In 2006, I was called upon to work on a case involving child pornography. I represented a client who was charged with storing information of a deviant nature on his computer—information and photographs that involved minors—and also with sharing that information with people in the United States. That was my first introduction to cybercrime.

I opened my own legal practice in 2010, and in 2011 I worked on four other cases involving youth. Three minors and an adult were co-accused. They were all charged with the same offence: uttering racially motivated hate speech on the Internet, making this publicly available in chat rooms, and uttering death threats and threats of bodily harm to individuals and designated groups, including aboriginals.

I asked myself how I ended up with these cases, since I myself am a member of the Uashat community. I am the lawyer who handled these cases. The young people claimed to belong to a skinhead movement, which was not proven.

We can see the evolution of these cases, and my comments today are based on my personal and professional experience.

In retrospect, some day I will be able to boast about the fact that I witnessed first-hand the expansion of cybercrime. Offences involving the inappropriate use of electronic devices were certainly common when I first started working as a jurist with the judicial district of Mingan, in 2006, but it is only over the years that accusations about the hate-related nature of comments made online reached unprecedented levels, including with our youth.

I mentioned that in 2006 it was an adult who was charged. Over time, I noticed a kind of democratization of that offence, if I may say so. Indeed, by 2011, many more young people were targeted and they were making much greater use of social media. So, something which, at the beginning, was an offence involving distinctive groups, including adults with a sexual deviance, has now spread to young people in general.

It is only after discussing the issue with the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord that it seemed relevant to present my thoughts to the public. My years of practice with young people have gradually led me to adopt a pragmatic view of the situations involving offences committed by minors. My knowledge of the principles of gradation for sentences under the Youth Criminal Justice Act lead me to believe that, depending on the seriousness of a case, the courts try to identify sentences other than remand, such as ordering that a young offender be put in a youth centre.

During the discussions on the letter of the bill before us and on the advisability of the measures to adjust sanctions applicable to cyberbullying, I presented to my colleagues numerous elements that are used as benchmarks to write a pre-sentence report.

A pre-sentence report is part of the criminal justice system for youth but also for adults, for which the same type of report is sometimes written. That is always done at the request of the defence attorney, or of the crown prosecutor. Personally, in a given situation or case, when I would see that a young person was very likely to be found guilty of an offence, I would invite him to cooperate with social workers. Usually, it was the social worker dealing with the young person. When a request is made for a pre-sentence report, the social worker ultimately meets the young offender and writes a report that mentions, among other things, the young person's risk of reoffending, his ability to reintegrate the community—that ability is rather obvious in the case of a young person, but less so in the case of an adult—and the support that he enjoys, both at a social and family level.

The report's conclusions will include a recommendation to the judge regarding the sentence to be handed down. I wanted to explain that aspect.

As my colleagues were told during consideration of the bill, my experience in the field allows me to say that it is quite unlikely that a minor, with no previous summary conviction offences in the area of criminal harassment—a summary conviction offence is a type of criminal offence, the other type being an indictable offence, well, it is a little bit complicated—defamatory libel or false messages, would be sentenced to a period in a youth facility.

The bill under consideration aims at updating the Criminal Code so that it gives greater coverage to certain offences perpetrated using a computer or on the Internet. This update is essential in this era of social networks and electronic communications.

That being said, the effect of the massive use of social media by young people will have to be weighed. As I pointed out at the beginning, we have seen that their use has been gradually increasing. They were used a little less in 2006 and, in 2011, they were used quite widely. Young people use social media quite commonly. Their passion for electronic communication is such that provision should be made for an alternative dispute resolution process or mechanisms for assessing the appropriateness of diversion for cases that otherwise would be tried summarily under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

When I refer to diversion, I am speaking about all the alternative measures that can be used within the community, within the existing system, to support a young person, rather than prosecuting a case and saddling that person with such a liability, especially when the charge is less serious, as in the case of cyberbullying.

I am well aware that the courts today work in conjunction with social workers and the community to determine whether it would be appropriate, in a particular case, to find an alternative to confining the young person in an institution or perhaps even prosecution. At that point, judges will often try to find an alternative.

[Agriculture and Youth Project, June 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, from June 4 until the end of August, eight teenagers, including two from the community of Pessamit, will be housed in the Centre jeunesse de Baie-Comeau, and, under the supervision of two trainers, will work quite literally in the field with produce growers and livestock farmers in the region, as part of a project called Prends le champ. They will meet dedicated farmers who will offer a summer alternative for these young people sent to the youth centre by court order.

This kind of initiative is particularly close to my heart, because in my legal practice, as a defender of young people, I have seen the positive impact that integration, personal support and a listening ear can have on young people who have been neglected by society and their families.

Thus, they will get to know themselves better by taking part in volunteer activities for certain events and by attending workshops to foster their independence. The eight teens will receive salaries and will be called upon to plan and manage their own budgets.

This innovative initiative attempts to integrate young people from marginal environments into society by allowing them to grow and develop outside urban areas, while ensuring they get a good tan before they return to school.