Children's well-being & rights commissioner pushes legislative reform

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:01]The system is actually really poorly adapted to to the children's and their realities.

[00:00:06]>> The 2019 death of a 7-year-old grandby girl at the hands of her stepmother and father while under youth protection care marked Quebec. It led to the Lan Commission and one of its recommendations, a children's commissioner. In her first report, she says it's time to listen to children and give them a charter of rights. All the rights of children are really scattered around across municipal laws and that make them difficult to first identify understand and and not only for children but also for the parents and adult to want to better understand the right of children's. So that's that's make it difficult for them to follow up and when you don't know what are your rights you couldn't ask to to for your rights to be respected.

[00:00:48]>> Children cannot be viewed solely as recipients of protective measures. They must also be recognized as subjects of rights as holders of rights in their own right. This implies in particular the recognition of their rights related to participation, development, dignity, and growing autonomy. In the pursuit of eradicating the legal systems current limitations when it comes to children's rights, the commissioner's report put forward three main recommendations. My premier recommendation, >> my first recommendation is to adopt a charter of children's rights that sets out all the rights to which children in Quebec should be entitled and that includes at a minimum the rights set forth in the convention on the rights of a child. A charter designed specifically for children and with children. The second recommendation will ensure the meaningful participation of children in the process of developing a charter of children's rights. A lot of different decision that are been made are are made without the consent or without the voice of the children. So we want the children to be involved also into the correct charters of children's right.

[00:01:49]>> My third recommendation is to explicitly affirm the place of children within the charter of rights and freedoms because we can take action right now to make the recognition of children more visible and explicit. To help bring her recommendations to fruition, the commissioner pledges to travel across the province this coming fall and winter seasons to meet and speak with children and youth where she'll listen, gather their ideas and concerns, and hear their proposals.

[00:02:12]>> We hope that uh they're going to manage to do a transparisen commitment to make sure that this charter is going to move forward. I think it's really important for the kids uh in Quebec.

[00:02:23]>> Karen Buer, City News, Montreal.