OTTAWA—The Conservative government has slashed 20 per cent of federal funding for youth justice programs in Canada, cutting $35.6 million used to supervise and rehabilitate young offenders, the Star has learned.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson made no mention of the drastic cut Wednesday in a news release that trumpeted “continued support” for the Youth Justice Services Funding Program.

It is a key federal initiative that has directly transferred money to provinces and territories to deliver services to troubled youth ever since the original Young Offenders Act was passed in 1985.

Instead, Nicholson said only that starting next spring, the Conservative government will “continue” to fund the program at $141.7 million annually.

However federal justice officials confirm that’s down from $177.3 million now spent on the program, a level that’s been stable for the past several years.

It is a significant programming cut, one that was not detailed in the federal budget document, directly hits the provinces, and represents more than half the $60 million in savings that the federal budget indicated the Justice Department must find next year.

Although the Conservative government has been loath to outline program cuts and did not publicly announce the reduction, it notified provinces and territories privately in correspondence this week.

Eric Hoskins, Ontario’s minister of children and youth services, was stunned by Ottawa’s move.

“The federal government’s decision to cut more than 20 per cent from youth justice funding is shocking and completely unacceptable. They did it without consultation,” he said.

“This is not the first time they have downloaded costs to Ontario. Once again, they have failed to be a reliable partner in our justice system.”

Hoskins vowed to “fight this cut” and said he will seek a meeting with Nicholson “to ensure he knows that he cannot balance his department’s budget on the backs of Ontarians.”

B.C.’s Minister of Children and Family Development, Mary McNeil, said she is “carefully reviewing” the implications, but right now it is “too early to say what the impacts might mean for our government.”

The changes take effect April 1, 2013.

For social workers like Beth Alkenbrack in Thunder Bay and the high-risk youth that she counsels, many of whom are aboriginal, it is more bad news.

Alkenbrack is a CUPE rep for a team that includes five other counsellors who do most of their work in the field — she calls it “tailgate counselling” — to aid kids in the city or reserves near Thunder Bay. The youth may be in jail, or out on probation, and are often affected by fetal alcohol syndrome, or other mental health illnesses. Her team’s work for Creighton Youth Serves is being cut (Ontario’s ministry says the agency itself made the choice, and troubled youth will still be serviced by other agencies in the area.)

Nevertheless, Alkenbrack says it is crucial that troubled youth get more support from the province and the federal government while they are still adolescents and “open to change.”

“They are still developing as adults,” she said. “If we can get involved. . . to put them in a different direction, so that when they become adults — they may not be doctors and lawyers, although some may be — but they’re not going to an adult penitentiary, then at the end of the day that is going to save money.”

“It costs less than $10,000 a year to service a youth with me, and if they’re in a youth justice custody facility, it’s going to cost a minimum of $150,000 a year.”

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The federal Youth Justice Fund has three components: a main fund, drug treatment and a guns-gangs-and-drugs component. It spent money on measures to target violent young offenders, to rehabilitate and reintegrate youth in trouble with the law, to deal with less serious types of offences outside the formal court process. It also funded pilot projects, helped train justice professionals and youth service providers and paid for research on the youth justice system.

Nicholson’s press secretary, Julie Di Mambro, declined to discuss the impact on programs, saying in an email “it is up to the provinces to determine how best to allocate their resources.”

She referred to unrelated program spending that will continue, and said the federal justice department would “achieve further savings” by focusing on its “youth justice priorities” like guns, gangs and drugs, crime prevention, and youth rehabilitation. But she did not respond to a request to interview the minister.