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1. INTRODUCTION
I am pleased to have the opportunity of addressing this important 20lh anniversary CAPSLE conference. While my address will focus on my efforts in dealing with violent youth, potential or actual, the critical links with education and law are, of course, quite obvious.
While still Chief Justice of Ontario, I agreed to chair an advisory committee for the mayor of Toronto to address these issues. Sarah MCCoubrey and OJEN (the Ontario Justice Education Network) played an important role in connecting with many disadvantaged and other youth through legal forums and mock trials.
Following the shooting death of 15-year-old black student Jordan Manners in a Toronto high school corridor in May of 2007, the Premier of Ontario, given my long-time links with the Black community, asked me to co-chair a review of the roots of youth violence. My co-chair was Alvin Curling, Jamaican-born former Ontario cabinet minister and Speaker of the Legislature. I am pleased to have the opportunity this morning of addressing some of the highlights of the report.
The Premier was not interested in relatively simple, short-term initiatives such as the deployment of yet more law enforcement to try to suppress that kind of violence. Instead, he asked us to investigate the roots and to recommend strategies to eliminate or ameliorate them. We submitted our five-volume report on these challenging issues to the Premier last November.2
2. DISCOVERY
In undertaking this work, we joined a conversation rather than starting one. Our work, although focusing on a more fundamental analysis than has often been the case, did not begin in a vacuum. In all orders of government, and probably more importantly, in communities across the country, individuals have been long committed, and have been working hard, to help reduce the violence in our society. However, these important contributions to our well-being are seriously hindered by the fact that, at least in Ontario, there is no overall policy in place to guide this work and no structures to prioritize or co-ordinate the efforts of those doing it.
(a) Findings
Overall, we found a focus on problems rather than on the roots of these problems, and on interventions once the roots had taken hold, rather than on actions to prevent that from happening. The...