Quebec Court's orders found to improperly go beyond individual's case and apply systematically
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear a Quebec case concerning the power of a provincial judge in a youth protection case to make an order impacting children other than the one appearing before them.
On Aug. 10, the SCC granted leave in Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse c. Directrice de la protection de la jeunesse du CISSS de la Montérégie-Est, et al. The case deals with alleged rights violations under the Youth Protection Act by the Director of Youth Protection. The Court of Appeal confirmed that the corrective measures ordered by the Court of Quebec were overbroad because they went beyond the applicant’s situation.
“We're going to the Supreme Court to give the jurisdiction to the judge to have the power to make an order that will apply for not only one child, but for all the children that are in the system,” says Stéphane Pouliot, a lawyer at Pringle & Associés, and counsel for two of the appellants – the child’s parents – in the case.
“The impact of the ruling will be major,” says Charlotte Vanier Perras, who represented the child along with co-counsel Myriam Couillard. “We hope that the SCC agrees with us that vulnerable children in need of protection from their parents by the state need their rights to be respected once ‘in the system.’"
“Courts must have the power to adequately remedy the systems’ failures towards a child and prevent them from occurring again for the child concerned, but also for all children who could be put in a similar situation,” she says.
The SCC’s clarification of the scope of a statutory tribunal’s powers to make broad orders will be relevant to many legal fields, says Vanier Perras. “We look forward to hearing the SCC express itself on youth protection issues at large and on how courts can better protect our vulnerable clients in the long-term.”
The applicant was a teenager at the time the Youth Division of the Court of Quebec ordered her into a rehabilitation centre under the care of the Director of Youth Protection, and she was housed in an individualized treatment unit for patients experiencing mental health and behavioural disorders. In response to certain isolation and restraint measures employed in the institution, the child brought a case claiming rights violations to the court’s youth division under s. 91 of the Youth Protection Act.
In July 2019, the Court of Quebec ordered several corrective measures, which the Director of Youth Protection argued were an overstep of powers conferred by the Act. These included an order for specialized training in mental health, the appointment of a healthcare professional specializing in mental health, and an adaptation of isolation rooms to prevent injury.
In February 2021, the Superior Court allowed the Director’s appeal in part and varied the orders so that they were individualized to the applicant.
The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission), a government agency established to safeguard the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, took the case to the Quebec Court of Appeal, along with the child and their parents. Affirming the Superior Court’s findings, the appeal court ruled that the orders exceeded the Court of Quebec’s powers because they went beyond the situation of the child in question.
Pouliot, the former chair of the Canadian Bar Association family law section, notes that with court delays, it is impractical for the Court of Quebec Youth Division to make the same order for every individual case of similar rights violations when it could make one order to apply systematically.
