Law overhaul aims to prioritize youth protection

Proposed reform focuses on child's safety, stability of environment, minister says

The well-being of the child will in principle be at the centre of Bill 15, a proposed overhaul of Quebec's youth protection regulations tabled Wednesday by minister for health and social services Lionel Carmant.

Among the changes is an acknowledgment that keeping a neglected or abused child within their biological family at all costs is no longer an absolute priority.

Ensuring the child is provided with a stable environment as quickly as possible will be a government priority, overruling the principle of parental primacy when social workers or judges are called upon to decide the fate of children in need of a stable living environment.

Quebec Premier François Legault described the tabling of the bill as a historic moment.

“Putting the child's interest first, before the natural family, before the interest of biological parents” is at the heart of the reform, he said.

The reforms in Bill 15 have been promised for months by the government and follow the tragic death in 2019 of a young girl in Granby who was subjected to repeated abuse despite being monitored by authorities at the Direction de la protection de la jeunesse (DPJ).

They also follow the tabling of the Laurent Commission report on the DPJ, containing 60 recommendations calling for the welfare of the child to be placed at the centre of all decisions.

Current legislation requires that “any decision taken under this law must tend toward keeping the child in their family environment.” The revised version in Bill 15 will stipulate that “maintaining the child in their family milieu must be a priority on the condition that it is in the interests of that child.”

If keeping the child in their immediate family milieu is not deemed possible, placing the child with people considered “significant,” such as grandparents or members of an extended family, is an alternative. If that, too, is not possible, authorities must offer the child an environment “that most closely approaches that of a family milieu.”

The new approach means biological parents will have fewer chances to improve their situation and maintain custody.

“Before, as soon as parents raised their hand and said: `We're ready to try again, we've changed, we've improved, the addiction is behind me,' we returned the child to the parents,” Carmant said. Now, if “at some point” the intervenors judge that the situation has not improved in a significant way, they can look for a more stable and permanent solution for the child.

“The younger the child, the more this decision needs to be taken rapidly,” Carmant said.