‘Children’s rights are number 1’: Q&A with Quebec’s new youth protection director as shares her vision

Lesley Hill was recently named Quebec’s new National Director of Youth Protection and she’s now sharing her vision for the system.

Her appointment came after the resignation of Catherine Lemay in Oct., after it was revealed that several educators at the Cité-des-Prairies Rehabilitation Centre for troubled youth in Montreal allegedly had sexual interactions with at least five underage residents and there are possibly more cases in Laval and the Montérégie.

“It’s been a whirlwind of activity since then, trying to go and see the kids and see workers and people in the organizations while trying to get a grasp on where we need to go next,” she said, as she sat down for an interview with CityNews.

According to an investigatory report released in December, a culture of silence contributed to the sex scandal at Cité-des-Prairies, which claimed employees were afraid of reprisals if they reported inappropriate situations. Four people who were directly or indirectly involved in the affair have been fired. Two managers involved remain suspended with pay.

“What I can say is, I’m following up on this [file] because I find it’s really important that not only we learn from it to make sure that we make all of our living environments secure for kids, but that we put in place the right things to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Hill said.

What is your experience working on the Laurent Commission, which examined the state of youth protection after the death of a seven-year-old girl in Granby in 2019, help you in your new role?

LH: “It helps me because I have the vision of where we need to go. So I don’t have to do that diagnosis because to me, the diagnosis is done already. It’s action time, so we need to just put stuff in place quickly as we can. So in that sense, it really helps me because the vision is already set. So I can start looking at: where are we at? What are the gaps? What do we need to do first? And there’s a lot of things, many things have been put in place already. So it permits me to also see what’s been done and then what actions are going to be the most helpful to help us change our system so that kids are safe, so that families are together and so forth.”

You said you would be a watchdog for Quebec’s children, so how will you do that and what is to come?

LH: “Children’s rights are number one. Their security is number one. So it’s that type of action where if I see rights being violated, I have to take corrective action, for example. So we were speaking with the Human Rights Commission and trying to figure out who’s going to do what because there’s a lot of players on this, on the ice. So we have to make sure that we’re working as a team and being as efficient as possible. But we’ve already determined that every time that there’s a violation of rights that goes through the court system, for example, it’ll be me who follows up on those and makes sure that they’re corrective measures and that we’re at least understanding what kind of rights violations are going on so that we can make sure to correct them in a systemic way as well.”