TORONTO - Ontario's premier will be under pressure to implement tough recommendations that are expected to emerge from a report addressing the root causes of youth violence and crime if he wants to prove he's truly committed to running an "activist'' government, the leaders of the review warned Friday.
Premier Dalton McGuinty tasked former chief justice Roy McMurtry and former speaker of the legislature Alvin Curling with studying the problems of disadvantaged youth after 15-year-old Jordan Manners was shot and killed in the hallway of his Toronto school this summer.
After holding dozens of community discussions in a number of Toronto neighbourhoods, McMurtry and Curling are heading out to Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Thunder Bay and Ottawa to continue their research. The report, which is due in May, will pressure the government into taking action, Curling said.
"We are not here basically to have a report put on a shelf or (to come up with) run-of-the-mill types of recommendations,'' he said.
"We intend to put forward ideas coming from the individuals from these communities -- suggestions and strategies that we feel strongly can work and will work.''
The recommendations will also seek municipal and federal commitments and challenge politicians to show they truly care about the future of troubled youth, McMurtry added.
"I expect some of these challenges and recommendations will be tough challenges for the government, not just for the government of Ontario but for all three orders of government,'' said McMurtry, who is perhaps best known for being one of the judges that ordered Ontario to allow same-sex marriages.
"So it'll be up to them to demonstrate that youth is truly a priority in the future.''
McMurtry said the report will focus on problems of youth violence across the province, which have a common link: lives based in poverty.
"The causes may vary a little bit from community to community but they all do have, I think, a certain commonality and common cause and that is there are too many young people who are giving up too soon,'' he said.
"Once a young person gives up hope about having any meaningful future obviously the likelihood of them turning to antisocial behaviour -- or worse -- is very real.''
Frances Lankin, president and chief executive of the United Way of Greater Ontario, said she recommended a number of initiatives during a meeting with McMurtry and Curling, but wanted a focus on addressing poverty.
"Any attempt to address root causes of youth violence has to look at some of the broadest systemic issues, that there's a very high correlation between youth growing up in poverty and a feeling of no hope for the future, no sense of opportunity in their lives,'' she said.
"We need to get at those issues, and that means getting at issues of poverty reduction, it means
