Newly appointed to the position of national director of youth protection, Lesley Hill appeared before journalists on Thursday, promising greater transparency.
“We are going to have to put a big light in our house, in all the wardrobes, in all the rooms of the house, and we risk finding cobwebs, and we will have to clean them,” he said. she imagined.
Ms. Hill was at a press conference alongside the Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, in turmoil since the media revealed a whole series of scandals at the Directorate of Youth Protection (DPJ).
The numerous controversies also led to the resignation of Ms. Hill’s predecessor, Catherine Lemay, last Monday.
Ms. Hill is a former member of the Laurent commission which examined the state of the youth protection system following the tragic death of a 7-year-old girl in Granby in 2019.
On Thursday, she promised to be a “watchdog” for Quebec’s children, and to use the Laurent report as a roadmap.
“I have nothing to lose,” she declared, explaining that she came out of retirement to accept the position. It’s a bit brave of the government to put a girl like me in a position like that, because I’m bound to be vocal.
“I won’t be shy about saying what I have to say,” she added. Lesley Hill believes that she will have the required independence, although in her role as national director and assistant deputy minister, she will report to the minister.
She says she “fell out of my chair” at the scale of the problems shaking the DPJ, and recalls that network employees are required by law to denounce unacceptable situations.
“As of next week, I will send a directive. We want people to talk about intolerable situations. I’m going to speak to the Public Protector as quickly as possible, because we need to protect people who issue whistleblowers.”
Last week, media revealed that educators had sexual exchanges with young residents of the Cité-des-Prairies rehabilitation center in Montreal.
Other cases of sexual misconduct occurred in Laval and Montérégie, according to the daily “La Presse”.
Added to this is the placing under supervision of the DPJ Mauricie—Centre-du-Québec due to revelations concerning children who were placed too quickly in a mixed bank with a view to being adopted.
The DPJ of Estrie would also have wanted to separate 2-year-old triplets to have them adopted, even if their biological mother was able to take care of them, again according to “La Presse”.
QS and the PLQ demand the resignation of Carmant
Faced with this accumulation of controversies, Québec solidaire (QS) judged Thursday that it had no other choice but to follow in the footsteps of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) in demanding the resignation of Minister Carmant.
“Mr. Carmant did not demonstrate the necessary urgency this week. I didn’t feel him shaken enough,” lamented MP Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, from QS, in a press scrum at the National Assembly.
He pointed out that Mr. Carmant also brushed aside, on Wednesday, a request from the Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights to relocate young people from the Mont-Saint-Antoine center, in Montreal, due to unsanitary conditions. .
The PLQ had already demanded the resignation of Mr. Carmant on Tuesday, without this shaking Prime Minister François Legault, who declared that he had “total confidence” in his “friend”.
No ‘direct link’ to immigration, says Hill
Asked earlier this week about the crisis at the DPJ, Mr. Legault deplored an “explosion in demand” due to “the pandemic, drugs and the explosion in the number of temporary immigrants.”
His minister Carmant repeated his remarks on Wednesday, before being forced to admit on Thursday that the government has no data on the number of immigrants who are reported to the DPJ.
“We don’t have any figures,” he admitted, “but everywhere I go in Quebec, people tell me that there are still a large number of reports for new arrivals.”
Questioned in turn, Ms Hill declared that there should be no “direct link” with immigration.
“I wouldn’t make a direct link, but what I would say, on the other hand, is that there are clearly populations that are over-represented in youth protection. It’s been going on for years. We can think of black, indigenous children,” she said.
