Thank you, and thanks to the guests today.

My question is going to be more on the criminal side of it, because that's what I'm used to. I just wanted to touch a bit on NCR, section 16, that we seem to have latched onto a little bit. The challenge with NCR is in regard to how far down the Criminal Code you go. NCR is normally reserved for the gravest of the grave. It's not reserved for shoplifting. It's not reserved for impaired driving. The judge can deal with those through various different ways of sentencing, if they so choose. I've never seen an NCR on shoplifting or impaired driving, and I don't know if I ever will. I think we may be looking at something that doesn't really apply unless it's the gravest of the grave.

The other issue that I wanted to get to is section 13 of the code, which we don't talk about much, which states that no person shall be convicted of an offence in respect of an act or omission on his or her part while that person is under the age of twelve years.

I bring this to each one of you to give me a brief answer. As a police officer I dealt with the same 10-year-old over and over, knowing full well that there can be no criminal involvement whatsoever. The option for the police officer is to turn that child over to social services. That's really the only option they have, so that child is turned over to social services. The police officer knows that there's something going on there. The police officer also suggests to social services that the child should probably not go back into his or her home environment. The challenge is that the parents may be part of the problem, but there needs to be some form of investigation to do that. Then social services turns around and says they don't have the authority to do that, that their job is to integrate the child back into the family.

There is the cycle, until the child becomes 12, when the police can actually do something about it criminally. It seems to be the catch here that until the child is 12, nothing can be done. Once the child is 12, if they've been identified with FASD, as all of us in this room would probably agree, it's too late. They've now had to enter into the criminal justice system, whether we like it or not.

My question is to each one of you. We've all identified what the factors are for FASD. We've all identified what could lead to it. How do we intervene at a young age so that they don't get to the criminal stage?

I'll start with Dr. Popova, and go to Dr. Andrew, and then Dr. Cook.

David Wilks

Transcript

Discussions (0)