Plans to abruptly shutter youth jails in 2021 were “shrouded in secrecy” and hurt Indigenous teens, writes provincial Ombudsman Paul Dubé in a 60-page report, released Tuesday.
Provincial government officials “deliberately avoided transparency” when they abruptly closed two youth jails in northern Ontario last year, leaving staff in the dark while failing to consider the best interests of the Indigenous youth who had to be suddenly transferred, Ontario’s Ombudsman concluded on Tuesday.
Dubé’s investigators found the ministry’s planning for the closures was “shrouded in secrecy” and this led to several problems, ranging from a “complete failure” to inform affected Indigenous communities, to not adequately considering the placement preference of a youth undergoing gender transition. Staff at the two jails and the youth themselves were informed of the closures only a couple of hours before the youth were to be transferred — in some cases, hundreds of kilometres away.At the time, the grand chiefs of both the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Grand Council Treaty #3 wrote an, expressing their “collective horror” at how the closures were carried out.
Dubé was also critical of the ministry’s lack of consideration for how the closures would affect the individual youth.
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