Report on government interventions for young people

This section describes government intervention for young people since Québec acquired a youth policy. This report on Québec government intervention is not exhaustive. It primarily presents the measures implemented by the 2002-2005 Youth Action Strategy, in keeping with the policy’s orientations.

QUÉBEC’S YOUTH POLICY

At the Québec Youth Summit held in February of 2000, participants agreed on the need to give Québec a youth policy. The Québec Youth Policy, titled “Bringing Youth into Québec’s Mainstream” was released in May of 2001. It was structured around four broad orientations:

• Engaging society in a culture of generational renewal
• Ensuring young people achieve their full potential
• Facilitating access to the job market and improving the quality of working life
• Developing a sense of belonging

The policy was intended to be a reference for ensuring the coherence of all measures intended for young people. It set out the major orientations for youth, and stated the primary lines of action. The measures selected were presented in the 2002-2005 Youth Action Plan.

THE 2002-2005 YOUTH ACTION PLAN

The 2002-2005 Youth Action Plan set out the means for implementing the policy’s orientations. It focused specifically on certain priority actions, i.e. the fight against academic and social dropping out, access to services and service continuity, and the coordination of government action.

Let us look at the avenues for action favoured for the first two years of the action plan.

Engaging society in a culture of generational renewal

According to the Youth Action Plan, engaging society in a culture of generational renewal meant, in particular:

[…] Make education a collective priority, ensure that the entire community builds respectful intergenerational bonds, and consistently maintain a concern for sustainable development in our methods. This means guaranteeing young people a place at the loci of decision-making and influence, and ensuring integration of the next generation and workforce planning.

To support school success, three avenues for action were selected: financing research into school persistence and success, supporting integration efforts for young dropouts and providing financial assistance to part-time students. Another initiative in the action plan for engaging society in a culture of generational renewal involved rejuvenating the public service.

However, after the implementation of the Youth Action Plan, few resources were invested in raising awareness of sustainable development, promoting generational renewal, transferring skills and developing respectful intergenerational bonds, or in guaranteeing young people a place at decision-making loci.

Ensuring young people achieve their full potential

Three avenues were chosen for ensuring young people achieve their full potential. On one hand, the Youth Action Plan aimed to promote young people’s access to housing, in particular through programs such as Logement abordable Québec, AccèsLogis Québec, Revitalisation des vieux quartiers, Rénovation Québec and Réno Village. In fact, an estimated 20% of the units built or renovated in the framework of these programs are occupied by young households.

On the other hand, the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (MSSS) has bolstered services for young people in difficulty in the framework of the Strategy and Action Plan for Troubled Youth and their Families. It consolidated the basic services for youths aged 0-17 offered at CLSCs (now CSSSs), including crisis intervention and intensive monitoring services, and bolstered access to specialized services at youth centres. Resources were also granted for implementing the new Youth Criminal Justice Act. Also, in the framework of its strategy, the MSSS set up youth intervention teams designed to enable young people presenting complex situations or several concomitant problems, and their parents, to move smoothly and continuously from establishment to establishment within the health and social services continuum.

Lastly, the MSSS supports young parents through the Program of Support to Young Parents, in the Integrated Perinatal and Early Childhood Services for Families Living in Vulnerable Situations program. For young families in which the mother is under 20 when her child is born, this intensive, continuous support program applies from the time the pregnancy is announced until the child enters school. It is designed to decrease the intergenerational transmission of social and health problems by giving people and communities more power to act.

Two other action areas are designed to prevent social adjustment difficulties among young people: the Talk. It’s the only way to grow campaign and the Québec en forme project. Note that the latter measure is designed to promote and organize physical, sports and outdoor activities to combat sedentariness, mainly among students at elementary schools in disadvantaged areas. The Fondation Lucie-et-André-Chagnon and the Québec government (through the MEQ, MSSS and MAMSL [Ministère des Affaires municipales, du Sport et du Loisir]) contribute equal shares of the financing.

And, to ensure that young people reach their full potential, the Youth Action Plan strove to put young people at the centre of the intervention, and provide for collaboration among partners so as to optimize the results and continuity of the interventions. However, in spite of numerous efforts, there is still more to be done to ensure true collaboration among partners and ensure continuity in the interventions for young people.

Facilitating access to the job market and improving the quality of working life

The Youth Action Plan put forward a set of initiatives to facilitate access to the job market and improve the quality of working life for young people. The initiatives were primarily structured around the following three themes: Reconciliation of family life with work, the fight against poverty and the development of entrepreneurial values.

The MESS (Ministère de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale) thus tried a number of intervention strategies for troubled youths under 25. Among others, it implemented the Individualized Integration, Training and Employment Plan for youths under age 25, and developed various projects focusing on young people’s skills enhancement and workforce integration, such as the Solidarité Jeunesse program, launched as a research action program. Recently, the MESS renewed this program which, in close collaboration with the Carrefours jeunesse-emploi, offers services and individualized support to young people applying for employment assistance.

Moreover, in addition to its Young Volunteers program, which promoted workforce integration, the MESS designed a measure called Ma place au soleil, designed for young mothers on employment assistance and focusing on obtaining initial qualifications. It also launched pilot projects tailored to the circumstances of street youths in Montréal and Québec City (Espoir projects), and participated in projects for young people at youth centres (the pilot project Qualification des jeunes), together with the MSSS and the Association des centres de jeunesse du Québec. This project is designed to help young people become independent and ensure they are qualified through intensive action.

For its part, the Secrétariat à la jeunesse (SAJ) developed the project Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge. It contains a set of measures designed to recognize school as a key component in strengthening young people’s entrepreneurial culture, creating a propitious environment for the emergence of a true entrepreneurial culture among young people and providing effective, accessible strategies that are customized to the needs of youth and future entrepreneurs, enabling them to make their business projects a reality.

Developing a sense of belonging

The Youth Action Plan recognized that the sense of belonging is a key component of active citizenship and social participation. It proposed actions for supporting young people’s involvement in their community, and for ensuring that youth initiatives would be well received and supported.

In the Plan’s first two years of implementation, much of the money allocated to developing a sense of belonging was invested in the SAJ’s creation of a Regional Youth Investment Fund, run by the regional youth forums. Resources were also allocated to the program for sports and recreation animators for aboriginal communities, as well as the Route verte, to maintain bicycle path assets. Lastly, investments were made to pooling transportation services in rural areas, in the context of the Ministère des Transports’ subsidy program for rural public transportation.

Overall, the Youth Action Plan mainly put forward measures for providing a stimulating milieu in all regions of Québec and for encouraging social participation by youth. Very few initiatives were created for fostering openness to the various realities around the world.

Foster exchanges with, and openness to, youth

The Youth Action Plan added another orientation to the four orientations listed in the Québec Youth Policy, i.e. fostering exchanges with, and openness to, youth. To this end, efforts focused primarily on developing a youth portal and improving toll-free telephone service. These two measures are designed to promote exchanges with, and openness to, youth by providing access to clear information on services for young people.

The above content shows that since the Québec Youth Policy was released in 2001 and the 2002-2005 Youth Action Plan was implemented, various actions have been taken to engage society in a culture of generational renewal, ensure the development of young people’s full potential and facilitate their access to the job market, improve the quality of working life, develop a sense of belonging to Québec society and foster exchanges with, and openness to, youth.