On December 1, 2021, Lionel Carmant, Quebec's Minister of Health and Social Services in Premier François Legault cabinet presented Bill 15, an overhaul of Quebec's Youth Protection Act at a news conference. This was a follow-up to the recommendations of the Laurent Commission tabled six months earlier.
The commission was created following the tragic death in April 2019 of a 7-year-old girl who had been subjected to repeated abuse despite being monitored by authorities at the DYP (Director of Youth Protection is the provincial agency involved when a child is determined to be "at risk").
On March 23, 2021, Minister Carmant was questioned in French by a journalist from CBC television regarding the follow-up from the Laurent Commission report. He replied: "The well-being of the child comes before everything. Science shows us that things have changed; one does not necessarily need a biological family: the child must be in a loving environment. That's what's really going to move our work forward this fall."
These words raised concerns among families. Would Quebec abolish the primary and pre-political authority of the parent in the life of their child? To claim that parental authority is primary and pre-political means that it was established before state authority. Parental primacy is the term recognizing that biological parents are responsible for the welfare of their children. Minister Carmant's news conference did not allay fears but rather confirmed them. The Quebec government now no longer speaks of parental primacy and has coined a new term: the "primacy of the interests of the child". The Minister said:
"The key element of this bill is to put the best interests of the child at the center, as a priority element of any decision concerning him… That does not mean that parents no longer have their role to play. On the contrary, they remain key players in the development and well-being of their children. We are, and always will be, here to support vulnerable families. However, and I strongly insist, the welfare of the child is what must be considered in the first place.
"So our bill aims, among other things, to strengthen the primacy of the interests of the child and respect for his rights... In Chapter 2 (of the old Youth Protection Act), there was a confusion that persisted, which sometimes distorted decisions. It said, yes, the best interests of the child are paramount, but we must always aim to return him to his family. So, we come to clarify that. Yes, the family is important, but only if it is in the best interests of the child. So that really clarifies things."
The State deleted Section 2.2 in the new legislation. It had stated: "The responsibility for the care, maintenance and education of a child and for ensuring the supervision rests in the first place with his parents." Recognition of parents' "first place" is now negated with the new legislation.
Premier Legault posted the following message on his Facebook page on December 2, 2021:
"This is a historic day! My colleague, the Minister of Health and Social Services, Lionel Carmant, today tabled the bill to amend the Youth Protection Act.
"Two years ago, we experienced a horrible tragedy with the death of the little girl from Granby in atrocious conditions. We promised ourselves that there would be a'before and an after'Granby. We have made a commitment to follow up on the recommendations of the Laurent Commission report, and now we are delivering the goods.
"From now on, we will put the best interests of the child first, before his biological family."
If these functions no longer fall to the biological parents, then to whom do they fall? To the State and the adoption system? Who best decides what are a child's "best interests"? Is it the State, or is it the natural parents? Does the child belong to the State, or to the parents, in other words? According to Communist philosophy, the child belongs to the State, and several judges in the province of Quebec share this conclusion.
Yet Church teaching, and common sense, tell us otherwise. The principle of subsidiarity, one of the four principles of the social doctrine of the Church, teaches that parents take precedence over the State, and that governments must not destroy the family nor undermine parental authority. To sum up, the Church teaches that children belong to their parents and not to the State. Pope Leo XIII wrote in his encyclical letter Rerum Novarum (nn. 12-14):
"Hence we have the family, the `society'of a man's house — a society very small, one must admit, but nonetheless a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State...
"The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error... Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State... The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home."
To say that a child belongs to the State and not to his parents is a position which is unfortunately becoming commonly held in our societies. One hears that children must be removed at an early age from "the bad influence" of their parents, to receive instead the correct beliefs of the State. Hence, the State's support of early education in day-care centres and preschools. U.S. President Joe Biden recently announced funding and free access to preschool for all children aged 3 to 4 years in his $1,750 billion stimulus bill.
Canadian investigative journalist, Serge Monast, who died in 1996, published "The Toronto Protocols" in 1995. In this document, he disclosed the objectives of a meeting of Freemasons in Toronto in June 1967 where they developed a plan for the "Fall of Nations" and the establishment of a New World Order. This secret meeting was organized by the "6.6.6." (as they called themselves) and consisted of officials from the 6 largest banks in the world, the 6 largest energy consortia on the planet, and the 6 largest representatives of agri-food.
Monast quoted from their report: "For the success of our World Plan (the Red Plan), it is necessary for us to make in all the western societies of the 70's, 'Offices for the Protection of Children' among which the officials (young intellectuals without experience, freshly out of universities where our internationalist principles are highlighted), will comply literally, without proper judgment, the 'Charter of the Rights of the Child'. Who will dare oppose this without being identified with barbarians from the Middle Ages?
"[With] this 'Charter' painstakingly developed in our "Lodges", we will finally eliminate any parental authority over the family by shattering people fiercely opposed to one another for the protection of their personal interests. It will encourage children to denounce parents' authority as too traditional and too religious. It will contribute thus to subjecting parents to a 'collective psychosis of fear', which inevitably will cause, in a general way in society, a relaxation of parental authority. Thus we shall have succeeded in the first instance to produce a society similar to that of Russia of the 50's where the children denounced their parents to the State, and this without anyone noticing.
"Thereby transferring to the State the 'parental role', it will be much easier thereafter for us to monopolize, one by one, all the responsibilities that had been the exclusive responsibility of the parents. This is how we can have the traditional religious education of Judeo-Christian origin considered as an abuse against children.
"At the same time, but at another level, we shall register in the highest laws of the nations that all religious worship and practices of any kind, including witchcraft and magic, must all be respected in the same way as the others. There will then be ease to transfer this role of the State in relation to the child to the highest international bodies such as the United Nations.
"Understand this well. Our goal is not to protect children, or anyone from another, but to cause the collapse and subsequent fall of nations which are a major obstacle to the implementation of our 'New World Order'. That is why the 'Office of Child Protection' must be invested with absolute legal authority. They must be able, as they see fit, but always under the pretext of protecting the child, to remove them from their original home environments and place them in family backgrounds or foreign government centres that have been established for our internationalist principles and religions. Therefore, it will complete the final breaking of the 'Western family unit'. Without the protection and monitoring of their original parents, these children will be permanently handicapped in their psychological and moral development, and consequently represent natural prey, easily adaptable to our global aspirations.
"For guaranteed success of such an enterprise, it is essential that civil servants working in offices in the service of the State are young and without past experience and imbued with theories which we know to be empty and ineffective, and especially should be obsessed with the missionary spirit of the great protectors of children "at risk". Because for them, all parents must be presented as potential criminals, potential hazards to the welfare of the child here considered to be a 'God'."
We therefore see that what inspires our governments, their Youth Protection Departments and Child Protection offices are the principles of Communism and Freemasonry, enemies of Christianity.
In its report, the Laurent Commission claims to want to help parents, but at the same time wants to expand the power of the State. In order to ostensibly defend the rights of the child and yet interfere with the family, they are giving the State and its proxy Youth Protection Departments a great deal of power.
People will say that it is good to remove children from their family environment when they are subjected to mistreatment, physical violence, abuse, etc. The intention to protect children is laudable, but as is true in many cases, the devil is hidden in the details and how regulations will be applied.
For example, cases of violence against children represent less than 5 percent of interventions by Youth Protection workers who must respond whenever an anonymous complaint is made against a family. (In reality, the police could take care of cases of domestic violence.) Many of these anonymous reports originate from neighbours'quarrels, or when the values transmitted by a family are deemed to be not in the "best interests" of the child. This is what causes many good parents to have their children unfairly taken away by Youth Protection Departments.
Bill 15 says that the basis for removing a child from his family is what is in the "best interests of the child", without defining what those interests are. There is a great deal of interpretation necessary to determine a child's best interest, and there will be times when the State makes a determination that is contrary to parental understanding. If a neighbour, or the State, does not like your Christian values, you can be denounced and Youth Protection workers can interfere with your family.
Let us say your child was born a boy but wants to become a girl, the State would decide that "the best interests" of the child would be to take puberty blockers. Relevant especially today, parental authorization has always been necessary to vaccinate children. Not anymore. The new law would have the child's will prevail, not the parents. Bill 15 will ensure every child has an attorney to represent their wishes. If Johnny wants to "change" his biological gender, etc., so be it!
Ms. Andrée Ruffo, a former judge at the Youth Court in Quebec, has seen abuses committed by the DYP. She has demanded the dismantling of the so-called Youth Protection system. In an article dated January 20, 2020 in the daily Journal de Montreal we read:
Ex-judge Andrée Ruffo believes that the time has come to dismantle the DYP. "Of course we have to dismantle the DYP. For me, there is no doubt," she told QUB radio on Thursday.
Now retired, Ms. Ruffo reacted to a judgment of the Youth Court which unveiled Tuesday the abuse suffered by the brother of the martyred girl of Granby. She believes that it is up to the extended family and the community to take responsibility for the child, not the DYP.
"The responsibility of the children belongs to the parents. It's not for the State to take care of children in the first place," she added. "First the parents, second the community, and then the State ultimately, but that will be 10%; it will not be hundreds of thousands of children."
Is it time to launch a commission of inquiry into the DYP? "It's high time," said Ms. Ruffo. If, in her opinion, the Laurent Commission has its merits, but one must also pay attention to the choice of people who testify there, since too many of them work for the DYP. "I would like them to rethink the famous confidentiality, the confidentiality which protects the DYP. Why is it so sacred? Because they protect the DYP."
The ex-judge said she was extremely worried about the lack of transparency of the DYP, even towards foster families who receive the children without knowing the difficulties they have gone through. "Take the example of a foster family where you have two big boys aged 12-13 who have been abused and who are abusers. The social worker places two children aged 8-9 in this family, well half-an-hour later these children are abused by the big boys..."
In conclusion, the State should respect the authority of parents and help parents who have problems, provide support but not take over their children. May the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph protect our families, both parents and children, and protect parental primacy!
Alain Pilote has been the editor of the English edition of MICHAEL for several years. Twice a year we organize a week of study of the social doctrine of the Church and its application and Mr. Pilote is the instructor during these sessions.
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