Children and Youth — Issue No. 3 — Tuesday, March 6, 2007 (HTML)

2007 Legislative Session: Third Session, 38th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH
MINUTES AND HANSARD

Katherine Whittred, MLA
Chair

Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Clerk Assistant and
Committee Clerk

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH



CONTENTS

		Page

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair		21

Office of the Representative for Children and Youth		21
	M. Turpel-Lafond
Committee Workplan		34

Chair:	* Katherine Whittred (North Vancouver–Lonsdale L)
Deputy Chair:	* Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP)
Members:	* Bill Bennett (East Kootenay L) * Ron Cantelon (Nanaimo-Parksville L) * Dennis MacKay (Bulkley Valley–Stikine L) * Mary Polak (Langley L) * John Rustad (Prince George–Omineca L) Jagrup Brar (Surrey–Panorama Ridge NDP) * Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt-Metchosin NDP) * Nicholas Simons (Powell River–Sunshine Coast NDP) * denotes member present

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Committee Clerk): Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth for the third session of the 38th parliament.

As there has not yet been a meeting of this committee in the present session, we have not seen the election of Chair. I hereby open the floor for nominations to that position.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Okay. I will call for any nominations three times. Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

Seeing none, Katherine, would you accept nomination? I will put the question to the committee, then.

K. Whittred (Chair): Well, thank you very much. I will now call for nominations for vice-Chair.

K. Whittred (Chair): Congratulations, Leonard. I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you.

K. Whittred (Chair): Welcome to what is really, I guess, the second committee. It's sort of the first meeting of this particular committee.

I would like to start out by introducing, of course, Kate, who is our Clerk and who keeps me in line and makes sure that I am not making any huge mistakes in terms of what the Chair is supposed to do. So thank you for that, Kate.

And of course, Wynne, who is our researcher. I've had the pleasure of working with Wynne before. I worked with her many years ago on the privacy committee, and we had a wonderful trip at one point to Toronto, to a conference. I look forward to your good work once again.

Just to remind members a little bit of where we've been with the committee in our initial meeting, you'll recall that we met and had a brief discussion about the mandate of this committee. I think that we as a committee are truly honoured with the task that has been given us. We are tilling new soil, and I think that gives us an enormous responsibility, which I hope we will all feel deep within our hearts because we are in fact dealing with a very, very precious commodity — the children of our province.

We are tasked by three different sources, if you like. Of course, we have the legislation. We have the mandate of the Legislative Assembly. We have, indirectly of course, the recommendations of the Hughes report.

I was a history teacher in my former life, as some of you know, and I used to like to say that if you don't know where you've been, you can't see where you're going. As we start out on this journey I think it's important to know where we've been. I certainly recommend that all members of the committee have a look at some of those items that I've just mentioned, particularly the Hughes report and the legislation that governs this committee.

In my concluding remarks before we start on this morning's business, I wanted to just quote a couple of lines from the Hughes report. One is: "Front and centre among those whose cooperation I invite are the elected Members of the Legislative Assembly. I am recommending a key role for them in leading the way towards changes I see as essential to the safety and well-being of our children and youth…."

The second quotation I wanted to read to you is recommendation 2 from the Hughes report: "That the Legislature strike a new standing committee on children and youth, and that the representative and deputy representatives report to this committee at least annually." The reason: "This all-party committee will contribute to a greater understanding among legislators and the public of the province's child welfare system and will encourage government and the opposition to work together to address the challenges facing the system." As your Chair, that is the recommendation that I am going to be guided by.

With that as a little bit of introduction, I am going to ask our new Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen, to come and take her place.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Good morning, everybody. Congratulations to Katherine and Leonard on your appointments as Chair and vice-Chair. I'd like to congratulate Kate on adding to the number of children that she'll be responsible for, and also to recognize Wynne's assistance. It was very significant in my recruitment and in the ongoing project of establishing my office. She has provided great support through the Clerk's office. So thank you.

I'm very pleased to have a chance to meet with you. I wanted to do a few things this morning. I wanted to thank you, first of all, for allowing me to take some of your time. I want to recap some of the ongoing work in

my office to launch the office and get it open for business. The work has several facets, and I want to provide some detail on where that is.

I also want to introduce you to some of the staff that I have with me today. First of all, I have Clara Robbins. Maybe you can even come up and sit, please, Clara. Clara was appointed in January as an acting deputy. Clara has had a distinguished career in public service in British Columbia. She worked on the Hughes review, she's worked in the ministry, and she's worked in the child-serving area. She claims that she's very close to retirement, but she's far too essential to be able to retire. I think she has a calendar where she scratches off every day, and she has about 30 days left. She's been very important for me to do some of the work that I've been doing in the last few months.

I also want to introduce you to Rob McPhee, who's here. Perhaps you can come up, Rob. Rob is an economist. He's been working on a secondment at the Office for Children and Youth. Rob is originally from Dease Lake in northern British Columbia and has a very unique set of skills in terms of analyzing linked data sets and performance measures.

He's been involved in two studies. The first study was with the child and youth officer and the provincial health officer on health outcomes for children in care — a very important study that was released last year. A new study will be released by me and the provincial health officer on education outcomes for children in care. Rob is going to continue his work into the representative's office, and I will talk a little bit more about that.

As well, I have a consultant here who's been assisting me with developing a workplan for monitoring an auditing function of the office. That's Alan Robbins, who claims to be semi-retired and had quite a distinguished career in both federal and provincial public service in qualitative and quantitative review of programs and services.

These are just a few people I've asked to come along with me today to assist, should you have some questions.

I want to talk about some of the ongoing staffing processes that I'm engaged in. We are establishing a new office in Vancouver. There was an office for children and youth in Vancouver in the financial district. There is a new office that will be established, in the Kingsway area, likely, in Vancouver — more of a storefront office. That office will house most of the critical injury and death review resources and staff for the function of the representative's office.

I think I also reported out, when we met with a smaller group of the committee, that I am looking at establishing a point-of-service or an office in Prince George. My goal is ideally in a first nations community or reserve, even if that's an urban reserve.

That is a type of gateway to the north. I realize it's not really truly north, and my colleague Rob McPhee from Dease Lake reminds me that it isn't even close to the north. But it is a hub somewhat. Well, I know that for John, it's central — right in the middle of the map of Canada. However, that is a goal that I have to do that, and that's an ongoing part of it. But that's just the physical places.

In terms of moving forward with setting up the offices and getting the mandate in place in order to function fully, I want to make a few comments about the scope of the work. Also, close to the end of my presentation I want to talk about how we may be able to work together as a representative and a committee to do something a little bit different.

First of all, I want to say a few things about advocacy. A very important part of Justice Hughes's report was that there be effective advocacy in all parts of the province. This is why, working with a transition team, I'm looking at the office in Prince George and ensuring that there's full geographic coverage in the province.

The act grants me a great deal of room to occupy, and I realize that the act may have certain issues that need to be addressed. The act grants me a great deal of room to occupy, but I am a relatively small office. In comparison with the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which has 4,000 people and hundreds of millions of dollars in program funding and deals with thousands of children every year in very contested and sensitive matters, I am an office with 30 full-time employees and a budget of approximately $5 million.

As a result, I have had to make some very strategic choices about where my emphasis will be in the advocacy area. My choices to date, subject to further direction from this committee and input by the members on this committee, is to focus on vulnerable children and youth in particular and the 9,500 to 10,000 children that are in care or home placements. That is a highly vulnerable group, so there have to be some strategic choices about how those resources are going to be used.

The second overarching area of my mandate is the monitoring, auditing and reviewing of the services in progress for children and youth provided under the various provincial statutes and ministries. That function is going to be carried out largely here in Victoria because of the proximity to the seat of government.

Some of my immediate concerns that I've been addressing there are privacy issues. I've been working with the Information and Privacy Commissioner making sure that there are proper policies and procedures in place for privacy and also providing appropriate data, linking data sets that are available inside ministries and making sure there is an appropriate database so that we will have a good baseline of information as to how children and youth are doing in British Columbia and how vulnerable children and youth are doing in comparison to those youth. That is a very significant component of a successful fulfilment of the mandate of the representative.

The third area is to review and investigate the critical injuries or deaths of children. As I mentioned, I'm looking at placing that in Vancouver. A multidisciplinary team or roster of individuals is being recruited and

identified in order to assist with this function. There is a full campaign, shall we say, to staff the office. I do have a website operating. I'll give you the web address in case you did want to, through your political assistants, make sure that it gets out into your ridings to any individuals that might be interested in work in this area. The web address is www.rcybc.ca.

That is essentially a website under construction, but it has links to all the positions, including three deputies that I'm staffing and numerous other positions. The staffing exercise that I'm engaged in, in setting up this office is an open, transparent, merit-based staffing exercise. I've worked closely with the B.C. Public Service Agency, even though I'm an independent officer, to make sure that all the requirements of merit and public accountability are met in that process, with proper advertising within government systems and outside. On the deputy search, it has been a national search. The ad ran in the Globe and Mail last weekend and through provincial newspapers and some targeted recruitment as well.

The staffing exercise is an important exercise at this point. A number of people have been recruited to acting positions, in particular to ensure that as the children and youth office of B.C. is shut down, there is proper transition of all those files into the representative's office, that nothing is lost or forgotten, and that an advocacy function that would have been performed in the children and youth office is still available to the public in the representative's office in an enhanced way.

Another area I wanted to report on to you is…. In the Hughes report there was a recommendation, recommendation 47, for the establishment of what Justice Hughes called a children's forum. The children's forum was to be the government agency — such as the coroner, public guardian and trustee and others — who ostensibly have a child-focused component to their mandate. The goal was to get them seated together, to have a common agenda, to ensure that the services are integrated and coordinated for children and youth.

I want to report to you that we have terms of reference for the children's forum. The children's forum will have its first meeting on March 23, at the end of this month, and then will meet regularly. The recommendation was that it be perhaps one or two times a year. I think it will be more like a quarterly meeting or more often. The children's forum…. The work has begun there as well, even in advance of officially opening for business. I felt it was important that that start.

To some more perhaps pedestrian concerns. I did want to report a bit on the different phases of the opening of the office. Essentially, the work is proceeding in three phases with three somewhat different time lines. The first phase is the initiation and organization of the office. That will be completed by March 31, so essentially the office will be open for business as a representative's office on April 1. The types of activities that have been ongoing there are to confirm the organizational structure, recruitment of staff, reviewing and securing locations — although I may need the assistance of the member from Prince George with respect to the Prince George location — and preparing a strategic plan for the office in light of the concerns I mentioned about limited resources and a key agenda.

I am in the process of making some recommendations with respect to proclaiming the legislation and any regulations that might be needed to make the mandate effective. That is a very big concern for me at this point. Developing an effective communication strategy and a corporate identity is well underway and is ready to be launched for April 1.

The communication strategy is vital because the concern in the Hughes report was that families, children and guardians know that there is an advocacy service available inside an office like the representative's office, so we are re-rolling out a 1-800 service and making sure it is going to be in the north and elsewhere so that people will be able to have the link into a properly trained advocacy function inside the office.

Other concerns are just retaining counsel, ensuring that there are appropriate records management policies and procedures during the transition from the children and youth office to the representative's office.

That phase is nearly completed, and on April 1 we will be opening. We will have some type of official opening to which you will all be invited.

Some of the phase 1 activities are around setting terms of reference and deliverables for advocacy, a workplan for advocacy, terms of reference for the multidisciplinary teams, issues with respect to privacy, records management. Again, I've worked closely with the Information and Privacy Commissioner in that regard, and he has been very helpful in developing those policies.

The second phase of work for the office will be ongoing to July 31, 2007, and that will be program implementation and operations. While the office will be open on April 1, we will still be staffing. The staff will not be completely in place, but the advocacy function, in particular, and the monitoring function will begin.

The legislation may be proclaimed in phases in order to carry out all the statutory responsibilities. Probably the last phase that will be proclaimed will be the critical injury and death phase, because it requires a very clear framework around information sharing, privacy and the full capacity to do investigations, etc. So that is an area where the staffing may take a little bit longer, probably until July.

By July I'm hoping to complete the recruitment and appointment of staff, complete all the tenant improvements and the offices to be open and fully functioning in three locations, to have a finalized strategic plan, to have made any other recommendations to government on timing for legislative proclamation or any regulations that might be necessary, and to have in place records management policies and agreements on shared services, technology, etc.

I also hope, to that date, to have an agreement and a plan for implementation for advocacy programs, the monitoring function and the reviews or investigations into critical injuries and death. I'm hoping the multidisciplinary

team will be established in full by that time and the children's forum will have had at least two meetings.

The third and final phase of the work at this startup component is what I would project would probably be in March of 2008. That will be the service and enhancement and reporting component, where I will do a full report-out on the establishment of the office and see how it's functioning; what recommended improvements may be needed; respond to feedback to partners, communities, children, youth and their families; and adjust program responsibilities, etc. Of course, the input of this committee is critical.

I'd also like to see longer-term strategic plans and service planning documents prepared in order to make the office function effectively.

That provides a fairly technical briefing of some of the work that I've been engaged in since November, but in particular since I've been here on a full-time basis for the past month.

Now I want to switch a bit from that. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. I want to switch from that to a different but related topic.

K. Whittred (Chair): Perhaps what we should do at this point is entertain questions. I also would like committee members to introduce themselves.

K. Whittred (Chair): That's something that we missed at the beginning of the meeting. I know you have met many of the members of the committee…

K. Whittred (Chair): …through other meetings and other avenues, but some are new. So why don't we start with Nicholas and go around the table. Just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about where you're from.

N. Simons: It's a pleasure to be here, and thank you. Very nice to meet you finally.

My name is Nicholas Simons. I'm a rookie MLA. I came through the child welfare background with the ministry and also with first nations. I'm really pleased that this process has begun in earnest. I think it's a positive day for British Columbians. I look forward to long chats about some of the things that I've observed. Hopefully, some of the concerns that I have about aboriginal child welfare will be addressed here, so I'm looking forward to the process.

M. Karagianis: Maurine Karagianis from Esquimalt-Metchosin. We've spoken before. I have a background of nine years in local government and a business background prior to that. Also, in the late '90s I spent a number of years in government as ministerial assistant to several cabinet ministers, so I have some background in government. In fact, at one point I worked with the minister responsible for social services, which covered all aspects of social programming for children and families.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Nice to see you again. Leonard Krog. I'm the MLA for Nanaimo. I'm a lawyer by profession, and I've appeared in court on numerous occasions fighting apprehensions by the ministry over time. I think I actually appeared once or twice for the ministry. I have some experience in this area.

I'm the critic for the Attorney General, and I think we're all looking forward to working with you.

R. Cantelon: Ron Cantelon, Nanaimo-Parksville. Once again, it's good to see you again. I'm looking forward to working with you.

B. Bennett: Good morning, Mary Ellen. My name is Bill Bennett, and we met at the throne speech. I come from Cranbrook, and I guess my only claim to any expertise on this committee is that I raised two kids — not necessarily all that well.

D. MacKay: Good morning. Nice to meet you, Mary Ellen. My name is Dennis MacKay. I'm the MLA for Bulkley Valley–Stikine. I'm in my second term, and Dease Lake is part of the area that I represent, so I'm looking forward to talking to Rob a little later.

My background, obviously, before I got involved in politics…. I was a police officer for 28 years, and I was a coroner for ten years as well as a private investigator. So I've had a great deal of experience in investigative work. I look forward to the challenges that this committee is going to have in front of it and making sure that we do look after our children, because they're going to have to look after us in the years to come. So I look forward to this committee.

M. Polak: Mary Polak, MLA for Langley. We've met before in the other committee. In terms of background, I spent ten years as a school trustee in Surrey, three of those as chair. My particular focus was on aboriginal education. I spent seven of those years being part of building what had been sort of a non-functional aboriginal education advisory committee and had a wonderful team of folks from the various first nations that we had involved there.

It's a particular passion of mine to see us look at new and innovative ways that we can outreach to aboriginal students, in particular to those who are in vulnerable circumstances. I guess the one thing I hope would come of this is a shift from our thinking broadly around the hopelessness of things and moving more into: "Yeah, we can do this."

If there was one thing I learned from the people I worked with, they were tired of always made to feel

that their situation was hopeless. They wanted to feel as though there was lots they could achieve, and there certainly was. So that's where I come from.

J. Rustad: It's good to see you again. As the MLA for Prince George–Omineca, I do like to boast about it being the centre of B.C., but I think I'll take your lead and call it the centre of Canada from now on.

J. Rustad: Middle Canada, yes. I spent three years as a school trustee before entering into this and prior to that, from the business world. As with Mary, I spent a great deal of time once as a trustee advocating for a different education model for first nations, based around some approaches that were taken in Alberta around the Amiskwaciy Academy. So I spent a great deal of time in discussion with first nations groups, with the various bands that were in the school district, and trying to find some ways to improve that system in terms of a different approach.

K. Whittred (Chair): I'm Katherine Whittred. I am the Chair of the committee, and I am from North Vancouver. My background was as a teacher. I guess the only thing I can say about child welfare is that over a lifetime in a school, I witnessed just about every pendulum swing and effort to be more creative and so on.

My greatest hope is that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. I had the pleasure of being the critic for what I think Maurine referred to as the social service ministry when we were in opposition. That certainly opened my eyes to a great many things. I also chair at the present time what we call the social development committee, which is a caucus committee that looks at cross-ministry initiatives and whatnot. I think that has a very big crossover with the kind of work that we do here. So I really look forward to what is ahead of us.

Now, let's take a few minutes and have questions on the first part of Mary Ellen's comments this morning, and then move on to…. I think you mentioned, Mary Ellen, that you're going on to a new area.

M. Karagianis: Mary Ellen, I really appreciate the fact that you mentioned the Hughes report right away. I'd like to ask you: is it your attention basically to try and implement, as much as possible, as many of the recommendation as you can that are pertinent to your position?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's important that the creation of the office and things like the children's forum and other things are a direct expression of the implementation of the Hughes report.

With respect to all the recommendations in the report, clearly some of those reside within government ministries. The function that I will have as an independent representative, in terms of monitoring implementation of the Hughes report, is a matter that I am actively considering, if there's a role to do that. I realize that the first anniversary is coming up, and it may or may not be timely to do that.

I think my immediate focus has been to open my office for business and get the mandate fully functioning as a key expression of the implementation of the Hughes report. Whether or not there's an opportunity after that to look at monitoring that is a matter I would like some direction on with respect to the committee's view on that.

M. Karagianis: I appreciate that. I would hope that the committee is going to allow you to pursue that. You're right. We are coming up to an anniversary. Certainly, there are questions from within the children and families world about what the progress has been do date.

For many of the families that were most affected by this, there is ongoing concern on their part that much of what Ted Hughes recommended be followed through. I think they feel a certain amount of ownership for that.

I'm certainly here to advocate strongly that we, as much as possible, continue to pursue and resolve his recommendations as really pertinent to how government moves forward in this particular sector.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): A very mundane question just in terms of the distribution of your staff of 30: where do you see them working? I mean, the main office in Vancouver for practical purposes, a smaller officer here and a much smaller office in Prince George. What do you anticipate doing?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the distribution will be fairly even across the three offices. The idea is three deputies: the deputy for monitoring in Victoria and a staff that has research and auditing capacity here; the deputy for critical injuries and deaths and special needs in Vancouver, with a staff including the investigators, other child injury and death specialists, and multidisciplinary team leader. I'm looking at the deputy for advocacy in Prince George, with a director of advocacy, advocates, call centre, call analysts, etc.

That's a rough idea of it. The idea of integrating those three offices will be important. It's a fairly even distribution.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Do you have some sense now of the children that are in care — what's their physical distribution across the province in terms of population?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I have that. I've been briefed, and I'd be happy to brief you on that.

On the website I've posted a fact sheet. I do have sort of a map of British Columbia that shows where the major concentration is of the children in care. In fact, the major areas are the lower mainland and parts of the Island. The composition of the 9,500 children in care…. I mean, the majority are aboriginal children.

We do have an understanding of where they're failing and why they're not performing well. That is a key area that I've been coming up to speed and being briefed on. I can speak more at length about that maybe in the second part of my presentation. But that is a key concern for me — to have a good understanding of the approximately 10,000 children. How are they doing? What services are reaching them or not reaching them? What are the systemic advocacy issues and individual advocacy issues that are coming forward?

When I talk about prioritizing and strategizing around the limited resources of my office, I've really been focusing in the early stage on that group of children.

B. Bennett: Mary Ellen, I just want to ask you for some clarification about your mandate and how you see your mandate.

You made a comment about being concerned about making sure that your mandate was effective in relation to regulations that will follow the legislation. I probably have less background in this than anybody here at the table, so this is a very sincere line of inquiry. I need to understand what your mandate is.

Do you get your mandate from the legislation and from whatever regulations will be created, and that will be your mandate? Is that the way you look at the job?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, there are two ways to look at it. Technically, the mandate is created by the Representative for Children and Youth Act and the regulations that might be passed pursuant to that. That is a very broad piece of legislation, although it is in need of some adjustment. There's a discussion that we could have around that, and possibly I can provide you with something of a briefing around what this means in terms of actual statutes, ministries, programs and services in British Columbia.

Part of the work I've been doing in the last few months is having a very comprehensive landscape scan to know: is it Kids First? Is it StrongStart? What exactly is covered under the legislative mandate of the office? That's one issue. How that mandate can be effectively carried out is another question, but that is a first issue. Of course, my judicial background is such that I like to be very clear on what is the mandate and authority there.

We will have a need to clarify that, and there will be certain requests I will have to make to the government to say that I need this regulation to be put in place to be fully effective. That will be an ongoing process. I think it is a process that could be very much assisted by this committee. I can give the full briefing on that. I don't think you want to hear that this morning. The full briefing on what the legislative scope is — I can share with you some information on that, which I intend to make public, and then we can discuss that.

B. Bennett: Just a quick follow-up on your comment about regulation. Are you discussing regulation directly with the ministry?

M. Turpel-Lafond: The transition manager for the Hughes report implementation process is Deputy Attorney General Allan Seckel. As the transition manager, I've had a relationship with him, to say that I would like parts of the act brought into force or not brought into force.

It's very limited — what is enforced at this point. By April 1 we need to have that point clarified. There are some very important discussions about bringing into force the legislation or amendments or what have you to make sure that the mandate is in force and that budgetary and other responsibilities can flow on April 1. That is an ongoing matter at this point — normal in a transition process. But it's a very significant component of the work I'm doing because we want the public to be confident that the office is there, it's open and it can function.

N. Simons: Just a follow-up, if I may, before I forget the point that you said you're discussing with the transition team. I'm wondering if that process of discussing the mandate and the extent of your jurisdiction is going to be a public discussion or whether that'll be determined without the involvement of the committee. That's my first question.

My second question has to do with: how will social workers across the province be made aware of what you're doing? Will they feel that you're part of their system and that you're going to be an advocate for social workers, as well, to do their job?

My third question has to do with the mandate of your office on federal land. First nations would probably need to have some kind of formal agreement with the province so that your office would have some jurisdiction on aboriginal territory. Those are my three questions.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Those are good questions. They sort of reflect some of the work that's been going on. First of all, with respect to child-serving agencies — workers that are in child-serving positions across British Columbia. I'm liaising closely with all of these organizations. I'm meeting with them. I'm entering into protocols to have regular meetings and discussions. I'm going through a process of ensuring that in the child-serving area, I'm hearing the voices of all the people, including front-line workers.

I think it's really important because they have so much valuable information. Also, they do such honourable and committed service, whether it's a teaching assistant with a special needs child or a social worker or what have you. I mean, these are really wonderful and experienced people who can bring a very child-focused perspective into the work of the representative. So that's been a very happy part of the work I've been doing, and hearing their concerns as well.

In terms of the issue on federal land with respect to first nations, what I propose to do in my work with the main aboriginal organizations — the delegated child welfare agencies and others, but in particular with the five main aboriginal organizations — is enter into a

memorandum of agreement with them around the work that will be done so that we can talk about a common agenda, etc.

Given my background, my area of interests and my knowledge base, obviously, ensuring better outcomes for aboriginal youth will be a very important part of the representative's work. Making sure that aboriginal people are working in the representative's office will be a key part of the agenda, as we move forward, and ensuring that aboriginal children in British Columbia have that sense of place and language and family that has sometimes been missing in the past. That is a key thing. I think proper relationships and protocols need to put in place there, so I'm quite committed to that project.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Actually, with respect to the Chair, if I might be permitted to maybe launch into the second part of my proposal, I think it might assist to give a sense to members — I mean, after there are questions about the setup of the office — and an idea of what I might propose to do.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you. I'll entertain one more question. Mary had a question. Then we'll move on.

M. Polak: Yeah. It doesn't have to be lengthy, and you may not have much information on this yet, but it was, I guess, a curiosity growing out of some of the other questions. How have you found your reception in the various aboriginal communities with which you've interacted thus far?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thus far I think it's been a very positive reception. I've had some very nice experiences. I assisted one agency with respect to clarifying a problem that they'd had for about nine months, and they surprised me by 12 people showing up with drums, singing a welcoming song in my office. I mean, it's been very delightful, very positive. I think the reception is very good.

I think people do know me, in any event, from the past, but you're only as good as the next piece of work that you do. The reception should be good if the work is good, and I think it's a little bit too premature. It's been very positive, but I've been saying: "Let's see what we can do."

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you. Let's move on into the second part of your comments.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Good. Well, thank you very much, and I would like to entertain questions or comments after this as well.

Another one of my purposes today, apart from reporting out on the progress of establishing the office, is to talk to the members about the kind of conversation the members of this committee might wish to have with the representative in my office in the months and years to come. With your permission, I would like to make some suggestions in that regard and leave them for your consideration or have a discussion about them today.

The political consensus which marked my appointment as representative, I think, was quite historic, and it was very important for progress in terms of dealing with vulnerable children and youth in British Columbia. I would like you to consider whether this consensus approach could be continued into the development of a longer-term plan for children which could be developed by the independent office of the representative in a collaborative fashion with this committee, the ministry's child-serving agencies and others.

In my reading, child welfare is not an area marked by many strong and fundamental differences in terms of goals and objectives. Rather, I think there's been a lot of spirited discussion but a great deal of like-mindedness among practitioners, researchers and those in positions like yours for many years.

I don't want to minimize partisan disagreements around these areas because my office is in some ways probably a product of that disagreement, but it's more that the disagreements in the field are about the means to achieve the goals and objectives that are widely shared and less about the goals and objectives themselves.

Let me say this in another way. Are we not all in favour of a strong and effective child welfare system that secures the safety of vulnerable children and sees to their well-being and successful development?

My challenge as your representative is to extend this consensus into the operation of the child welfare system in the province. I think that to succeed, I need to be very fair-minded, thoughtful and independent in my work. I know that you're going to set me straight if I make any mistakes.

I think that a close working relationship with this committee, with some particular choices about the type of work that needs to be done, could make the difference between success and no success.

In particular, in my briefings in getting an appreciation of the landscape in B.C. and the delivery of services and problems here, I think there are many positive things. It's very exciting to be in a province that is one of the healthiest, the wealthiest and has one of the best education systems in Canada. It's one of the safest, with some remarkably positive things, such as the lowest youth incarceration rate in Canada. I come from a province that had the highest youth incarceration rate in Canada. Here we have the lowest.

I've been very delighted to learn about how that was accomplished, through the hard work of officials within government who set out a plan and effectively carried out that plan, probably not recognized adequately for the good work that they have done over a number of years.

It's very exciting to have that. At the same time, while I have a very strong sense that it's the best of times, I have a very strong sense that it's the worst of times in the sense that of the 9,500 to 10,000 children I've spoken about earlier, my assessment — thanks to people like Rob, who have studied the data very carefully — is that those children, the vulnerable children and youth in particular, are not doing well. Only approximately 28 percent of them are graduating from high school. Only 21 percent of the 28 percent are graduating in an academic stream that they could go on to post-secondary.

The teen pregnancy rate is multiple times the rate it should be for the children that have flown through care, come in and out of care.

The lack of stability in their lives in terms of placements is tragic. The extent to which they suffer from mental health issues, depression…. They are prescribed cerebral stimulants like Ritalin — multiple, multiple times the average for children in British Columbia.

I realize I'm not telling you anything you don't know already, and I can give you very detailed briefings on what I've learned since I've come here. But then I look at that group of vulnerable children and see how poorly they are performing in a province that, in fact, is the healthiest and wealthiest — one of the most beautiful provinces in Canada, if not the world — and has been so successful in areas such as youth incarceration. I turn then to think: is it possible in British Columbia to set out a plan for children — in particular, vulnerable children — that will be an all-party, independently monitored plan? It would require us, though, to look very specifically at what are called, in government circles, performance measures — meaning: how are we doing with respect to those children?

I've given you a bit of a glimpse about how we're doing. How are we doing over the long term? Can the social policy discussion about investments for those children be informed by very good information about how we're doing, linking appropriate data sets, possibly having a unique identifier to monitor: are they ready to learn when they come into kindergarten? How are they doing at the foundational skills assessments? Are they ready to go into post-secondary? Have the post-secondary institutions got bridging programs to support these vulnerable children to break these cycles?

These are some questions I know everyone around this table has probably asked yourself at one point or another, either in the House, in your ministries or in your critic portfolios. I think the time has come, however, from my perspective, that we identify, perhaps, a short statement — it doesn't have to be a long statement — of key objectives to galvanize coordinated action in the child-serving system in British Columbia.

In order to do that, we have models that we can look at. British Columbia is unique, but we have some very good models. New Zealand is a good example of a jurisdiction in which a clear, integrated, ten-year plan was developed for children and monitored. And it was done so by an independent officer, much akin to the office that I'm now occupying. I think it's early on, but it has been very successful.

There still are political disputes, and rightly so, about children, but it has been very much into a process of measuring how we are doing and, when it's not working, deciding how to do something different.

I would like to see that clear statement of objectives — like children should be healthy, children should be safe, children should be educated, they should be ready to learn and they should be successful in their education. These are just some ideas of the types of objectives that need to be stated.

The reason why I propose this is that in my process of briefing and getting acquainted with the situation in British Columbia, I've had the opportunity to read the service plans of ministries. Of course, every ministry under the financial administration requirement has service plans. A very important process. I, too, will develop a service plan.

But I've read it with a different eye, and that eye is: what are the objectives for children in British Columbia? When the person comes from outside to read it, what are those objectives? What I've found is that there's a myriad of objectives.

Ministry by ministry, program by program, the performance measures are not clear. It's not to fault anyone on any side. It's just that there hasn't been clarity around what the key objectives are, how they will be measured, how we are doing, and how we are doing with respect to accepted measurements and performance criteria with respect to children and youth.

The type of conversation I'm suggesting we have as a committee with the representative's office is a conversation around a plan, a plan that could perhaps be developed by the independent office for consideration by the committee that would have a consensus. It would be very collaborative, as well, with ministries. I intend to be very collaborative — and I have been with ministries — and to meet with deputies and others and officials and be briefed, and ask them how they see these various principles and priorities operating within their ministries.

The need to integrate across ministries for children and youth is a very profound need in British Columbia. When I read the statements of members of this committee inside the House, outside the House, inside your respective responsibilities, I can see there is a continual request for this: how are we doing, why are we not doing better, and so on. I think we need to clarify this, very much so, in a non-partisan fashion.

There is a growing body of very good quality research in Canada and elsewhere that can assist us to determine how we monitor how we're doing with respect to children and youth in British Columbia. I'm just going to refer to some bases of information that I find quite useful, which would inform this exercise. For instance, the nature and severity of child maltreatment in B.C. was reviewed in a very credible fashion in the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect.

The recent changes in child welfare in the United Kingdom, following the Every Child Matters Green Paper some years ago were very important, as is the New

Zealand exercise in that regard. The use of child welfare performance measures guide operations and management in our neighbouring jurisdictions of Alberta and Washington State. They have been doing some very innovative work along the lines I'm suggesting.

The British Columbia profile and key findings as they come out of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth are informative again of the exercise that we could engage in. The assessment function that's in child welfare practices, particularly as it relates to the early diagnosis of conditions like learning disabilities, FASD, etc…. There are some very informative findings that we can cull from that practice.

What I am proposing, essentially, is for the committee to consider whether a statement of objectives would be developed — informed, of course, by the highest principles, like the UN convention on the rights of the child, and by statements that have been made in British Columbia that are highly admirable and supported, such as: "British Columbia would be the best jurisdiction in Canada for children. "

That is a very high aspiration. Those aspirations need to be put into a clear and comprehensive plan that can be measured and that an independent office such as the representative's office can report out to the public and say: "Here's how we're doing with respect to the education, health and well-being and safety of children — in particular, within this whole plan, the issue of the performance of aboriginal children, ensuring that they're doing much better where they've been failing."

Some of you may have taken note that yesterday in the Times Colonist I did an op-ed, particularly on the issue of federal government funding. I think that in order to be successful in British Columbia it is essential that that issue be addressed. It's not a provincial issue per se; however, with the Kelowna accord being scrapped, the issue of investment in aboriginal children's futures is a question mark with respect to British Columbia.

As I indicated in that editorial, UNICEF and other international agencies are reporting that Canada is doing extremely well in many respects, although children generally report that they'd like to spend more time with their parents and have more positive social interaction with their parents. The UNICEF study stands in stark contrast to how aboriginal children are doing. The type of investment needed for aboriginal children is perhaps in addition to what may be needed for other children.

There is a federal government issue in that, but I think in developing a plan for outcomes it would be an opportunity to really identify where the federal components of responsibility are in terms of improving outcomes for aboriginal children.

That is a proposal I would like to provide you with. I'd like you to think about it. I think it would really provide a longer-range plan. It would give some clear performance measures tied to policy areas and allow us to perhaps continue this consensus that was there around the implementation of the Hughes report into a future piece of work from which we can certainly report back to the people of British Columbia and say: "We have an integrated plan. It is being monitored by the best practices, best performance measures that are available. Where there are difficulties, we are looking at addressing those difficulties through innovation."

K. Whittred (Chair): That certainly provides us with much food for thought. I will entertain some questions. We'll just sort of monitor the time. I think this is something that is too big for us to come to any conclusions about today. Mary, why don't you start out?

M. Polak: I'm very, very interested in what you're saying, in particular because there are many jurisdictions around the world where they are in fact seeing successes in areas where we still struggle. I'm very interested in that.

I wanted to, I suppose, throw in some food for your thought around data and performance measures that would reflect the performance of aboriginal children. It goes like this: we often speak of our need to close the gap. On the other hand, when I speak with folks who are from the aboriginal community and are now in a more academic field, I often hear a real negative reaction to that phrasing, and I understand it. There is a feeling that even by saying we want to close the gap, that in and of itself is a rather patronizing way of looking at things.

I would hope that in developing some performance measures for aboriginal people, aboriginal children, that you would look very carefully at ways in which that can be constructed — I don't know if "independently" is the right word — such that you're examining: are they improving over where they were, not just are they improving as compared to non-aboriginal children.

There's a subtle kind of message that gives, when we are always saying, "How are you doing compared to everybody else?" as opposed to: "Are you actually improving over time?" There are, as I'm sure you're aware, a number of very knowledgable experts even within British Columbia who can assist with that. That was one I wanted to flag for you.

N. Simons: I'm just wondering in the meantime: who's doing the reviews right now for critical injuries and deaths, before you set up your office?

M. Turpel-Lafond: The review of critical injuries and deaths that currently happen in British Columbia are not any different than they have been. In terms of the new office, as of April 1 we will have capacity around investigations.

Again, if you read the legislation, you can see that there probably will be a 12-month delay before one would occur, should there be an unfortunate injury or death, so there is a bit of a time delay. The regular public officials that have responsibility — such as the coroner, the ministry — when there are reportable circumstances are doing reviews.

I'm entering into a protocol with the ministry to see all of that material in advance, in any event, and through the CYO. This is a key area that we're trying to continue from the CYO, child and youth office, to the representative office.

It is a matter that has not been, arguably, effectively done. The children's forum will give us an opportunity. I'm meeting with the coroner to ensure that this function is designed properly and works properly and that information is shared.

What is a reportable circumstance is of great interest to me — how that is defined inside operations and how that information gets reported over to me. I'm monitoring that and entering into protocols to share that information now.

M. Karagianis: I'm actually quite excited by the proposal that you've put before us here this morning. I think that there are a lot of really excellent options here for building a better plan, for performance measures and for this kind of cross-government, child-focused equality in how our service plans actually address the children in care.

I am curious about the kind of resources that you think might be required above and beyond what you currently would be using for your three-stage full mandate. This is something that takes you beyond that mandate in a really positive way. Do you anticipate that this would require new resourcing?

M. Turpel-Lafond: In the first year of operation, the budget…. At this point I feel relatively comfortable with where we are with the startup. If we were able to develop a very clear plan with a key set of objectives and performance measures…. In terms of actually monitoring and auditing that, there will probably need to be enhancements in order to have appropriate monitoring.

What I would like to see happen with that plan is…. For instance, let's say we have the education component, particularly focused on children in care; they have better education outcomes. I would like to see very direct engagement with both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Children and Family Development to make sure that their monitoring function is strengthened. The Ministry of Children and Family Development is reviewing the academic performance of every child in care with the Ministry of Education officials so that it's linked and actually is performing.

Is it the representative's office that has to actually perform that? No, but it can be an oversight function to say: "I would like to see you integrated and working together. I'll monitor it and assist you in any way I can, collaborate and then report out to the public on it."

I'm not suggesting that the representative's office becomes a huge office. I think there's a lot of merit in keeping in being streamlined and focused and critically engaged. It is, again, engaging collaboratively with ministries, to see that they are performing that qualitative review, that integration.

The kids in care. Is anyone reviewing the academic performance of kids in care as a group? My understanding at this point is that they're not. That's not acceptable. It could probably be addressed quite quickly with some energy, some focus, some parameters, and then it could be reported out. I think that the public, and the committee, would like to know: those 9,500 kids, the school-age ones — how are they doing on the FSAs? Are they doing their FSAs? Are they doing well?

I appreciate the issue that you raised, Mary, about the gap and closing the gap. It's true. Aboriginal children have a unique sense of place and identity and language. We need to nurture their learning spirit. We need to support them.

However, aboriginal parents…. I'm an aboriginal parent, too, with four children. We want to know how our children are doing with literacy and numeracy. We're not saying that we want them exempted from everything but literacy and numeracy and that we don't want to know how they're doing. We want to know how they're doing.

These are certain indicators. They don't tell you everything about the full spirit of development of a child, but they're key indicators. You have to pick which indicator you'd like to look at. This is a part of the discussion we can have into the future, and I can brief you on it.

For instance, a very interesting indicator is teen pregnancy. It's a very good indicator, because we know that if a teenage girl has a child, her outcomes are very poor. The outcomes for the child are poor. Her education outcomes, her employment prospects, her health outcomes, her mental health outcomes, her addictions outcomes — all of these tend to be correlated. The research is very clear on that.

Teen pregnancy is an indicator that we really want to look at carefully. How do we respond to it? Do the children in care receive sex education? Do the children in care have access to birth control?

These are just examples that I'm providing you, saying: what are key indicators? It's where you can say: "Well, we can't measure everything. But can we measure certain things where we can really have a major impact in British Columbia? We want to address this."

This is where there'd have to be some strategic choices. Certainly, in my office I need to make certain strategic choices in carrying out a mandate. But I'd like that to be an effective mandate, in which we can report out to the people of British Columbia: "This is why we're measuring this, and this is how we're doing. This is how we're doing in comparison to Canada, other countries. This is where we would like to truly be."

We don't want to have teenage girls coming through care pregnant. We don't want that to happen. We know that's not a positive outcome for them, as much as we value children. There is just an example of how you have to make certain choices about what to measure. You can't measure everything, but this is in the area that's not difficult to measure. It's available. There is data available in that area that can be very quickly monitored and accessed.

B. Bennett: I know enough about the mandate to know that you could proceed with this kind of a plan with or without the blessing of this committee, so I appreciate the fact that you've come here to talk to us about it and to try and engage our minds in helping to create that kind of a plan.

I don't imagine that there's anyone here who would be unable to set their partisanship aside for the sake of children. We can, at the very least, embrace the concept. The practicalities of that sometimes are different, you know, in politics. I know that from the government's side we have a minister responsible — ministers, actually, when you look across government, but one in particular — so we will have more of a challenge on our side finding a way to embrace a plan that you would use over the years to do your performance measurements. But I don't think it's an impossible task.

I think it's a very interesting and very good idea. I'm hoping that we can follow your leadership on this and approach this from a non-partisan point of view, all of us recognizing that we'll have some challenges. Government has its own plan — a series of plans in various ministries.

Those of us on the government side will want to do the right thing for children. We will also be faced with reconciling whatever you come up with as a plan with what the government is already doing and planning to do. That's reality, and we'll have to make the best of it. But if we get non-partisan support on that from our colleagues in the opposition, we can maybe pull it off.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think those are very encouraging comments. Obviously, in my new position I will be meeting with all the ministers and deputies. I have started some of that. I thought it was most appropriate for me to present this idea to the committee first, which is what I've done today, and to let you think about it. I will be speaking to the ministers, the Leader of the Opposition and the critics more precisely about what I mean by this and to get the support.

Again, part of the challenge, I think, is there are many important and positive plans for children in British Columbia in various ministries, but when I step back and I'm reading the service plans and goals, I'm seeing different objectives. Well, why would this not be an objective here and it's an objective there?

I don't think it's a complex exercise to integrate it. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of these same principles in different service plans, but it's not an integrated plan. It's not a plan that has an independent office, I guess, to report out as well, which I think is a helpful part of it, and to collaborate and do the work. A proposal is different. It can be accepted, or it cannot be accepted.

I think that it is an opportunity to move in a direction where other jurisdictions have tried this and have had success. The U.K. and New Zealand are two good examples. The U.K. in particular has had enormous success in this area. They created certain authorities. They have a different kind of jurisdictional arrangement, but in many ways British Columbia and New Zealand are quite similar — population-wise, geographically, etc., with some of the same challenges in terms of indigenous populations.

I think that there have been examples where it could work. I suspect British Columbia could be one of those places where it would work remarkably well, because, as I said, it's the healthiest, wealthiest, most educated, one of the most beautiful provinces in Canada. Certainly, this small piece of work, with people of goodwill, could easily be accomplished.

R. Cantelon: Well, I like the term "easily." I don't think there's going to be much easy about it, but as a member of the hiring committee, certainly we expected nothing less than the ambitious program that you've put out. I'm sure my fellow colleagues on that committee would agree. I certainly think it's very worthwhile, and I embrace the idea of going forward.

You've answered part of what was going to be my question: how you bring together a commitment from the various ministries. You're meeting with the deputies individually, but what sort of time frame and mechanisms…? Will you hold group meetings? Because you've mentioned Education, of course, and the other ministries that have to be involved and the other service agencies that might support us.

Do you have a plan sort of laid out in your mind for how you're going to do this?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it's very important that it be done with dispatch. It shouldn't be a ten-year plan that comes about in five years. It needs to be a plan that will be developed by July. So it will require quite a bit of energy, but this is where there have to be some very, you know, judicious choices.

I mean, it can't be a plan of 30 objectives for children and youth, even though that would be ideal. It is going to have to be a plan of the five to seven key objectives. Other areas could be added later, but what are the five to seven key objectives?

Children are safe. What that means…. We can explain that further. Children are healthy. Children are educated. Vulnerable children are supported. It has to have a discrete number. Ministries will have myriad objectives, but they have certain high-level objectives and often get mired in so many expectations, objectives and policies, and are they doing well, and are the programs serving people.

There's change required that we're trying to seek in terms of supporting families. Families have different needs at different times. So it has to be a discrete exercise. I don't see it as taking a very long period of time. If the commitment is there to do it, particularly around this table and then with your colleagues, it can easily be done.

The independent office would have to take a role in that, but very collaboratively. I mean, there's very interesting and innovative work being done in the academic field, in the ministries in British Columbia. There are so many strong and able people in this province to participate in it. There may be some people who say: "Well, it's not really useful. Why set objectives? Let's

just continue on with whatever we want to do in these various silos." That is an approach, but I think it's an approach that probably hasn't dealt with those most vulnerable youth effectively.

I think it just comes down to a matter of making certain choices. I can always say that I'm going to monitor seven things and the performance of delivery of government services in seven areas. This would be an appropriate fulfillment of my mandate to report to the people of British Columbia. I don't like to have to adopt that role, because I don't think it would really work.

What will really work is a consensus-based plan that we can continue to come back to and say: how are we doing in Education? Are we seeing improvement? Where is the EDI? Where are the FSAs? Where are other indicators? I think everyone can benefit from good information, and it can inform policy choices.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): The morning after I was elected the first time, my father-in-law said to me: "You know what your first job is, don't you?" I said: "Oh, I don't know. Get a constituency office together, whatever." He said: "No, your first job is to get re-elected."

I want to throw a tiny bit of a wet blanket on your comments here this morning. Ted Hughes is like Moses in Victoria. I mean, he has brought down the stone tablets, and no one questions him. I say that, actually, with great respect and affection.

I think Katherine and I both share the same view — and all the committee members, having heard them this morning — that this is a unique opportunity. As much as we are the opposition, and the government has to defend its record, we have a potential opportunity here to do something quite wonderful: to follow examples that you've cited from New Zealand and England, and to actually put children in the forefront.

It is, however, going to be difficult because, as is always the case, some of the things you will propose, which may be accepted by this committee, still have to make it past cabinet and the Treasury Board and fit into a budgetary scheme.

I must say — based on my experience, having done a great deal of family law over the years — the conclusions all come to the same thing. We waste a lot of money looking after people in adulthood who…. If we had done a better job as children and youth, we would have saved all of that great social and economic cost to society.

So I want to say I'm very encouraged by what I hear around here this morning. I sincerely hope that we can come up together with a set of objectives that is realistic and will meet everyone's political needs.

As I somewhat facetiously said, I think after this committee was initially formed: historically, in Canada, being appointed Minister of Finance has been the deathbed of all politicians. Unfortunately, and I say this with no pleasure, in British Columbia it has become being appointed the minister responsible for children.

It would be nice if, in fact, we could reverse that trend, so that that appointment was seen as an honour instead of a political death warrant. I think that's the challenge we're facing. How do we get past that to do something which is actually effective and which enables us as opposition to do our job but, at the same time, enables government to carry out programs that will effectively result in producing, hopefully, a generation of children who will have a far smaller percentage of them in care or in trouble or living in social situations that all of us around this table would find unacceptable?

M. Turpel-Lafond: There's no real reply to that. It's very important — the comments that help provide a context for me. Again, having been recruited from outside British Columbia…. Maybe this sounds a bit too much like a mantra, but this is the healthiest, the wealthiest, one of the best-educated provinces in Canada, one of the most beautiful provinces in Canada, with incredibly capable citizens, and we can fix it.

I realize you have your challenges and your war-torn battles, perhaps, from the past around the area, but I think that it's really important. Perhaps I can provide some enthusiasm in your effort, which is to say that these are things that can be fixed. I've worked with very traumatized children and seen remarkable changes. Traumatized children, children in care can do very well.

I think that it is a really important message for you to consider — that there are reasons you have a plan. You want an impact that's a positive impact, and you can get a positive impact. Certainly in British Columbia I think you can. I would maybe not say that in other provinces. In British Columbia I think the ingredients are certainly there. The political consensus you've had in the past is there. Consider whether you might carry it forward.

I will be in touch with you again to maybe articulate more detail about how I would see it. Maybe I would prepare, for your purposes — I don't want to call it a discussion paper, but — a workplan of how it would go, so you'd have something to bite into that's specific for the next session.

K. Whittred (Chair): Thank you. I am noting the time. I have Nicholas and Bill, and perhaps we can then move on to the next part of our agenda.

N. Simons: When you were talking about the indicators that we find in children in care — the 9,500 kids who are either in kith and kin or in continuing custody or who are under guardianship, maybe even under guardianship financial assistance; who knows…? The indicators you were mentioning, the social indicators, were the same that you could mention for first nations people in this province. Essentially, you see the same outcomes for children who are in the care of the government as you see for first nations kids — essentially, the same high suicide rate, the same high involvement with the criminal justice system, the same high mental health issues, teen pregnancies. You name it. We've all seen it.

What I think needs to happen sooner rather than later is to start measuring not so much the outcomes after the failure has already occurred, but perhaps focus more on

the quality-of-life issues for the families from which children are put into the child welfare system. Those are families that are in poverty. The only measurement that we need to start with is the fact that children in care predominantly come from families of poor socioeconomic status. I think that measurements absolutely need to be discrete, but they can't all be based on what happens after we've decided that the system has failed the child.

As much as education outcomes and health outcomes are important, really what we're looking at are symptoms of a deeper problem, and we should be really trying our best to measure what that problem is and to address that particular problem. I do think that we have predominantly tried to, basically, steer all our public policy based on either what's politically expedient or easily achievable or easily measurable. We don't do enough critical analysis of what we're measuring.

I would like the focus, if possible, to be on how we support families to keep children where they should be essentially. That should be the goal of this committee.

When you're reviewing and monitoring programs, I think that critical perspective needs to be taken into consideration. When you see programs that support families being cut and the emphasis going on removing children out of families later, when they're not supported — these things need to be examined.

With respect to the partisanship issue, I just want to point out that for three or four years all this government has been doing is partisanship. Really, if we talk about values, we can share the values. The members of this committee know that we're all interested in making sure children are healthy and safe. But when it comes to the government's decision-making, that's where I have no influence over it, as much as I've tried.

I'll tell you that there's a personal fight, because I know what partisanship does to an individual. So I say we have to take that into consideration. We have to be careful of it, and we have to be impeccable in the way we deal with these issues from now on, if necessary. We certainly haven't seen a lack of partisanship before.

I just had to make sure that that's clear. I would be thrilled if we could figure out a way to actually manage the issues around vulnerable children in this province in a way that doesn't constantly reflect on certain political ideologies, because there's no room for that here.

B. Bennett: I think one of the great challenges will be that the plan you develop — and, hopefully, we'll get to help with that — will not have the same kind of fiscal disciplines on it that a plan would have if it was being developed through the regular process, through the ministry, subject to Treasury Board realities.

I sit on Treasury Board. It's amazing. Everybody thinks that government has so much money to do everything. You could spend the surplus in one ministry easily. You could spend it all in Health. It would be easy to do that.

As you develop the goals, the plan, the performance measures and so forth, to the extent that it's possible, to somehow avoid putting you and this new process you're talking about into the position where you become at odds with government over, you know, we need more money for this, we need more money for that…. You're always going to run into that. It's always going to be part of what you do.

To the extent that it's possible to keep your objectives and performance measures higher than that, and hold the government to account as to whether they achieve those goals or not, that will be the crux on which this will turn, in terms of whether we keep partisanship out of this.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think that's a very astute point. I don't see it as being a Treasury Board type of process. It's a plan that has to have a certain consensus to it. In order to be implemented, it needs to be looked at. As an independent representative, a new representative, one of the things I have the luxury of saying is: "Well, what does work?" If these 95 or 100 children are doing so poorly in this remarkable province, what does work? That's a very important question that I think you recruited me to ask.

If this isn't working, what's going to work? Let's at least look at something that says: "Make that a very rational and informed process." Not that I woke up this morning and thought that giving everybody red pencil crayons is going to make it work better. No. I decided that teen pregnancy might be a key thing that can make it work better, because those kids won't be apprehended.

As Nicholas says, the pendulum can swing between apprehension and family preservation. Justice Hughes was very mindful of saying: "Find the right equilibrium there." Well, absolutely. You can find an equilibrium, but it underpins other things. So what works?

I have the luxury — because I'm not in the ministry, where I'd have a different type of accountability structure, whatever — to ask the question: what does work? And I can also say to you: "I don't think this is working very well. So how can we make it work again, or think differently?"

As I said in the op-ed, the federal government has a key role to play here as well. They have perverse performance measures in their social policy for children. That is, "We fund you based on the number of children in care you have," which, as the Alberta government has said very clearly in its service plan, leads to harm. So in an era when the number of children that are apprehended has declined for non-aboriginal communities, in aboriginal communities it goes up.

One of the concerns I have as my office gets out there, particularly in the north…. I'm wondering if that might have an impact as well. I'm quite mindful of that. There are issues there as well.

I do have the luxury of standing back and saying: "What does work, and what doesn't work, and why does it work? Show me that it works. What is the rationale within a ministry that this is going to work?" In my briefings I have had the luxury of being able to say: "Please tell me why this works or doesn't work."

J. Rustad: I just wanted to start off by saying thank you for what you have presented here today in terms of the thought, the idea, particularly around the consensus approach and the idea of bringing a plan to this group for discussion, to be able to have input and to work through some of the details and issues. I like that. That is what I thought was in the spirit of the Hughes report, so I'm very pleased to see that coming forward. I'm looking forward to how that actually develops.

There are so many issues. When I was put in charge of the hiring committee, one of the first things I thought of was: my gosh, asking somebody to take this on is really quite a challenge. Quite often you have a chicken-and-egg approach where it's: which comes first? Do you deal with the issue, or do you deal with the situation that creates the issue?

I think we always have to remember that this is about children. This is where, when you're talking in terms of developing the plan and what can be successful, I'm very encouraged because it is about children, and I think that's the best place to start.

In my experience from education, we had to deal with the same sorts of issues, because you're trying to deal with education outcomes, which is of course only one of the components that you'll be looking at. But when you're trying to deal with education outcomes, how do you get to that place where you can improve those outcomes? What support do you need to put in place? What becomes effective, what is not effective in terms of past practices, and what may change, going forward?

Like I say, I'm encouraged by what you brought forward. You have followed, as I have said, the spirit and intent in this. Really, I think it's up to this committee to be able to pull together in that non-partisan approach to be able to try to work with you — given the fact that, as my colleague has mentioned, there is not a bottomless pit of resources. At the same time, how can those resources be effectively applied and measured?

I'm very encouraged by your focus. You've mentioned many times the idea of performance measures and how we can mark that improvement and try to achieve goals. I think this is a good start, and I want to thank you for the work that you've done to date. I look forward to continuing our efforts together.

K. Whittred (Chair): I want to thank you, Mary Ellen and your staff, for being here this morning. This is just the beginning of what will be, I think, an ongoing relationship between your office and this committee.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much, and have a good morning. I will deal with your office as Chair and with the Clerk in order to establish a future meeting, if you wish…

M. Turpel-Lafond: …to go forward and, in particular, to receive a more comprehensive briefing on the idea.

K. Whittred (Chair): Let's declare a two-minute recess, and then we'll reconvene.

K. Whittred (Chair): The next item on the agenda today is to deal with the review and development of the committee workplan. I am very cognizant of the time, and I know that all members, including myself, have other obligations that we have to move on to. So I was going to ask for any comments or recommendations you might have.

J. Rustad: I was just wondering if we should move in camera on this, in terms of discussion, and whether you would want to entertain a motion to move in camera.

M. Karagianis: Maybe John could just elaborate on his rationale for moving in camera.

J. Rustad: My thought on this is moving in camera in terms of discussion of our workplan and moving forward…. I think it would be appropriate afterwards to have a statement as to what it is, but to be able to have an open discussion and dialogue on this, going in camera often helps. In which case, I'll move to go in camera.

K. Whittred (Chair): The committee is now back in full session. We have discussed the workplan that we anticipate following over the next few weeks. I believe we have achieved some consensus around the idea that we are greatly indebted to the representative today for the work she has done and for the proposals she has put forward. We're particularly impressed with the way in which she wants to work with the committee to better the role of children and the status of children in the province.

We are going to move forward with looking at the proposals that she put before us today. The Chair and Deputy Chair will meet and determine with the representative the appropriateness and timing of the next meeting, at which time we'll address the issues arising out of this meeting.

Is there anyone who feels that is not an accurate summary of what went on, or is there anyone who'd like to add something?

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Committee Staff:	Wynne MacAlpine (Committee Research Analyst)


Witnesses:	Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH