Of the 65 recommendations from the Special Commission on Children’s Rights and Youth Protection (CSDEPJ), chaired by Régine Laurent, 29 have been implemented or largely implemented, according to the five-year review of implementation released Tuesday.
To present the summary of achievements, the minister responsible for social services, Lionel Carmant, and the national director of youth protection and assistant deputy minister, Lesley Hill, held a press conference in Montreal.
Since the publication of the Laurent Commission report in 2021, the government estimates that 27 recommendations are currently “the subject of sustained efforts, require consolidation, or are partially implemented.”
Hill and her team at the Direction de la protection de la jeunesse (DPJ) are responsible for assessing whether a recommendation has been implemented, or only partially implemented.
The Laurent Commission was established in 2019 following the death of a seven-year-old girl in Granby. The recommendations issued by the experts aimed to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Tuesday’s report indicates that eight recommendations are either incomplete or have not yet been implemented. Among these is the need to strengthen youth intervention teams (EIJs). It is noted that EIJs are not deployed everywhere with the same level of support. The commission wanted to broaden the role of the EIJs and extend their reach to all regions of Quebec, by designating a key worker to assist parents in situations requiring multiple services.
The new strategy for child well-being, entitled “Growing Up with Confidence,” launched last April, includes a national deployment of EIJs for complex cases.
Among its achievements, the government has enhanced the programme de qualification des jeunes (PQJ), which has grown from 850 to 1,462 places in just a few years, and which supported 2,286 young people in 2024-25. This was one of the preliminary recommendations of the Laurent Commission in 2019.
Quebec also appointed its first commissioner for the welfare and rights of children, Marie-Ève Brunet-Kitchen, about a year ago. She published her first report last week, urging elected officials to adopt a Quebec charter of children’s rights, which is one of the commission’s ongoing recommendations.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
