The problems that cause youth violence in Toronto are complex. The solution should not be

Two minutes before midnight on a school day last month, four people jumped out of an SUV and shot a man dead outside an apartment building in Toronto’s North York neighbourhood.

Police have now charged a suspect with first-degree murder. He is 14 years old — high school age, not old enough to have his own driver’s license and the second boy his age in Toronto to appear on such a charge within two weeks.

“We are in a crisis,” said Solange Scott, chair of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s (OSSTF) professional student services division. “It is out of character for a 14-year-old to be charged with first-degree murder.”

Social workers, educators, psychologists and community support workers say a constellation of factors contribute to youth violence in the Greater Toronto Area, ranging from the impact of the pandemic to the proliferation of social media. But they agree the solution is much simpler: They say long-term funding commitments for support programs, coupled with the space and time to focus on root causes and preventing violence, are critical to creating change and saving lives.

Anger, sadness and fear uncontrolled during pandemic

Violent juvenile crime rose five per cent across Canada in 2022, according to Statistics Canada. Eighteen of the youth charged with violent crime that year were in Toronto — nearly a quarter of all those charged and up from just three the year before.

According to Toronto police, the average age of people involved in gun violence in the city has dropped from 25 to just 20 in recent years.

Experts say the COVID-19 pandemic and cascading disasters have hit children and teens at a critical point in their emotional and physical development. During the months that Ontario schools were closed, developing students dealing with powerful emotions like fear, grief and isolation simultaneously lost access to the stabilizing influence of the classroom and community programs.

Without real-life safe spaces, young people turned to their phones and social media, where conflict, intimidation and bullying were rampant.

“At a very critical developmental stage when children are learning how to resolve conflict peacefully through social support, school or sports, that support just wasn’t there,” said Lin Fang, a social worker and chair of the child mental health department at the University of Toronto.

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Solange Scott, chair of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s Professional Student Services Personnel bargaining unit, says staff who help young victims of violence need more funding for education and support programs.

Children and teens who are repeatedly exposed to intense stress experience developmental trauma, forensic psychologist Dilys Haner says. Those who don’t have access to support can get stuck in a fight-or-flight state, leading to difficulty responding appropriately to threats — such as the expectations, pressures and conflicts teens face at their age.

“Some youth … have found themselves in situations that they couldn’t handle, that then escalated, and they had difficulty problem-solving to get out of them,” said Haner, who works with juvenile delinquents in her practice.

“I have met young people who told me afterwards that they were shocked by what they had done.”

The pandemic has also exposed and deteriorated long-standing health disparities that research has shown disproportionately affect people of color, especially Black and Indigenous communitieswhere social services, housing and access to amenities were already lacking.

“Young people are very aware and families and communities are very aware that this has a significant, significant impact on the rise and increase of gun violence [and] “The murders we’re seeing are all over the GTA,” said Tanya Sharpe, founder of the Center for Research and Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims (CRIB).

“If you don’t have a place where you can go and talk about alternative ways of dealing with the grief, make sure there is a space for you that is culturally responsive. … You kind of get the message or the memo that, ‘My life doesn’t matter either.'”

Success in Scotland

In June, a 14-year-old boy was charged with first-degree murder in Etobicoke in connection with a mass shooting that left two dead and three wounded. The victims were playing soccer and dominoes, according to the daughter and widow of one of the victims.

That same month, a 15-year-old boy stabbed another 15-year-old after an altercation on a TTC bus. In December 2022, eight girls between the ages of 13 and 16 were charged with manslaughter in the swarming death of Kenneth Lee, who was living in Toronto’s shelter system.

The number of juveniles charged with murder in Canada peaked at 86 in 2006, the year after a string of gang-related violence led to the Boxing Day shooting in which Jane Creba, 15, was shot dead near Toronto’s Eaton Centre shopping mall. The killing led to charges against several alleged gang members.

In the same year Creba died, Glasgow, Scotland, was dubbed the “murder capital of Europe.” The city has had success treating youth violence as a public health crisis that can spread from person to person, like a disease. The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit uses data to understand the root cause of the problem and invests appropriately in preventative support programs.

a report said sustained long-term funding and time to study data were “critical” to the success of the approach, which the unit leader credited with reducing the number of deaths in the country by 35 percent between 2010 and 2020.

“It all starts with understanding the challenges in your context,” says Jimmy Paul, head of the Scottish VRU. “Listening to people with real-life experiences, testing and evaluating new projects … and then, if you find something good, making sure you scale it.”

According to those interviewed for this article, governments need to restore and increase the flow of funding to provide children with spaces that provide them with a sense of belonging and safety, such as bereavement counseling, sports clubs, counselors, social workers, peer-to-peer connections, and intergenerational trauma therapists.

Support workers who have experienced violence themselves and can interact with children in a culturally appropriate way are also critical, such as through CRIB support services. Neighborhood ambassadors program.

“Young people need to know that they are reacting normally to something abnormal,” Sharpe said.

OSSTF’s Scott said Toronto District School Board funding is headed in the wrong direction. Per-pupil funding is expected to be $1,500 lower this school year than in 2018-19.

Due to these cutbacks, she now has fewer staff available than before, namely one employee per two schools, instead of one permanent employee per school.

“The murder that took place on Woburn [Collegiate]: My member held the student who died. This is the reality of what is happening here,” she said.

“My members all came back to me and said, ‘Solange, we need help. We can’t do this alone.’