Children and Youth — Issue No. 4 — Tuesday, November 26, 2013 (HTML)

370 HSBC Executive Meeting Room, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
580 West Hastings St., Vancouver, B.C.

Present: Jane Thornthwaite, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Donna Barnett, MLA; Mike Bernier, MLA; Doug Donaldson, MLA; Maurine Karagianis, MLA; John Martin, MLA; Darryl Plecas, MLA; Jennifer Rice, MLA; Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA

2. The Representative for Children and Youth provided the Committee with an update on the work of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth and answered questions from Committee Members.

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the report entitled Special Report: Out of Sight: How One Aboriginal Child’s Best Interests Were Lost Between Two Provinces – September 2013

• Bill Naughton, Chief Investigator/Associate Deputy Representative, Critical Injuries and Death Reviews and Investigations

• Melanie Mark, Associate Deputy Representative, Advocacy, Aboriginal and Community Relations

5. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the report entitled Special Report: When Talk Trumped Service: A Decade of Lost Opportunity for Aboriginal Children and Youth in B.C. – November 2013

• Melanie Mark, Associate Deputy Representative, Advocacy, Aboriginal and Community Relations

6. The Committee recessed from 12:05 p.m. to 12:37 p.m. and from 1:38 p.m. to 1:46 p.m.

7. The Committee discussed its future work including a special project on youth mental health.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH


CONTENTS
Page
Office of the Representative for Children and Youth: Update	73
M. Turpel-Lafond
Representative for Children and Youth Special Report: Out of Sight: How One Aboriginal Child's Best Interests Were Lost Between Two Provinces	77
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton
Representative for Children and Youth Special Report: When Talk Trumped Service: A Decade of Lost Opportunity for Aboriginal Children and Youth in B.C.	91
M. Turpel-Lafond
Work of the Committee	112

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Jane Thornthwaite, and I am the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. We're going to get started, but I thought that, first of all, we'd do a bit of an introduction. Perhaps my Deputy Chair could introduce herself, and we'll go around the table to the committee members.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Carole James, MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill and critic for Children and Families, Deputy Chair.

M. Karagianis: Good morning. I'm Maurine Karagianis, the MLA for Esquimalt–Royal Roads and the critic for women's issues and child care.

D. Donaldson: Good morning. Doug Donaldson, MLA for Stikine. I live in Hazelton, on the Gitxsan traditional territories, and I'm critic for Aboriginal Relations.

J. Rice: I'm Jennifer Rice. I'm the MLA for North Coast. I'm the critic for northern and rural health and deputy critic for Children and Family Development.

D. Barnett: I'm Donna Barnett. I'm the MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin and Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources — for Rural Development.

D. Plecas: I'm Darryl Plecas, the MLA for Abbotsford South and the Parliamentary Secretary for Crime Reduction.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): And we'll introduce the panel members in just a minute, but I'd like to just draw to your attention that we do have some visitors in the gallery.

Grand Chief Doug Kelly, president of the Stó:lô Tribal Council and chair of the First Nations Health Council, and Chief Doug White from Snuneymuxw, welcome.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good morning, everyone. My name is Kate Ryan-Lloyd. I'm the Clerk to the Committee.

Welcome, everybody. We're here for two days, actually. Starting off, the representative will be speaking.

Perhaps, Mary Ellen, you could introduce the panel members that are here as well. Then you can begin on the first item, the update on the work of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, and we'll carry on with the two reports after that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Great. Well, thank you, and good morning, everyone. Let me apologize for being a little bit late. The helijet was a bit delayed this morning.

I'd like to introduce my staff that are present with me today. To my left, your right, is John Greschner, deputy representative. Beside him is Bill Naughton, who is the chief investigator and assistant deputy representative. To my right, your left, is Melanie Mark, who's the associate deputy in the area of advocacy, aboriginal community relations and youth outreach.

I would like to also say good morning and welcome to Chief White and Chief Doug Kelly, who are present, and acknowledge and recognize their leadership in the area with respect to serving children and families. Their presence here is most welcome.

I will be joining them later on this afternoon at the meeting of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the chiefs meeting just, as the crow flies, a few blocks from here, where the chiefs are meeting today to talk about a lot of very significant issues in terms of the future of their children and families, including federal education initiatives. I will speak later on this afternoon about a report that we will discuss here today as well about aboriginal services.

Thank you very much, as well, to committee members. This is the 27th regular meeting that the representative's office has had with this committee. I'm delighted that this is the first time, really, we've had an opportunity to debrief on a report so soon after the release of a report. That, I believe, is a testament to the hard work of the Chairs and members of the committee for the time and effort to become fully kind of caught up with the work. That's a very positive step, from my view. I think it's really important to have that real-time response and engagement.

I want to just touch base on a few issues by way of update around the work of the office. In the coming months I'll be finalizing and releasing reports on an investigation into the suicide death of an aboriginal youth in a remote
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community, a review of MCFD's adoption program, an investigation report into a critical injury of a child in the context of parental addictions.

Work continues and will be produced in 2014 on a number of projects, including an aggregate review of 33 youth living in group homes, an aggregate review of sexual assaults, an update on our 2010 report, Growing up in B.C., and I'll be tabling for this committee an analysis of responses to the recommendations I've made in my reports. I will continue to monitor residential redesign, the residential services issues for children and youth, and continue to monitor the ministry's ICM project.

I'm producing an analysis of progress on the ministry's operational performance and strategic management plan, and I'll be developing the framework I'll apply in reporting to this committee in 2015 as part of the statutory review of the monitoring function of the office under the RCY Act.

Just in terms of budget update, I will be meeting with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services on December 6 to make my 2014-2015 budget submission. As you are aware, a budget increase was approved earlier this year to deal with the extended mandate of 19- to 24-year-olds eligible for Community Living support.

I'll be presenting a stand-pat budget for the coming year as, like everyone, I appreciate the pressure, in terms of the fiscal pressure, around government and want to make sure that any new investment, should there be any new investment, go into direct service for children and youth.

At our last appearance we discussed the Still Waiting report on adolescent mental health. I just wanted to give a brief update to committee members that while we had a very good discussion about the challenges facing families when they need services in terms of the mental health system, the 16- to 24-year-olds…. Last week my senior staff — including Bill Naughton; Melanie Mark, who's here; and Grant Charles, who's a professor at University of British Columbia in the school of social work and is present today, and he's an adviser to my office — toured residential treatment facilities in Alberta, particularly therapeutic mental health–related residential treatment facilities in Alberta.

Last year, when that report was released, I encouraged MCFD to tour those facilities — the former deputy did send some staff to those facilities — because I think it's important to see an example, while not perfect, of a more robust system for adolescent mental health and treatment. So I'm very grateful that the staff had a chance to go, to see firsthand the range of supports, including family support, intervention, outpatient health programs, crisis services, treatment, foster care, secure care and stabilization programs, aftercare programs and graduated community transition programs.

Just to give you a sense, because I know that this continues to be an issue which the committee will be working on…. When you look at what are called tier 1 adolescent mental health beds, those are acute care beds. In the Lower Mainland our population is about 2.5 million. In Calgary the population is 1.2 million. But for tier 1 adolescent mental health beds, here in the Lower Mainland we have 26 beds, which includes BCCH, CAPE, Surrey Memorial and others. In Calgary, with half the population, they have 37 beds.

The tier 2 child and youth mental health beds in the Lower Mainland here…. At the Maples we have about 22 beds. They're looking at opening another six soon. Let's say perhaps 28 eventually, maybe by the end of this year, will be up and operating. In greater Calgary there are 140 beds. I just bring those numbers forward by way of stark contrast to say that with those types of services and supports, with the full spectrum of step-up and step-down child welfare and mental health services, there is a marked difference. I'm grateful that the staff has been there, and I'm going to continue to encourage MCFD to look to Alberta, not that all of the answers are going to be in Alberta. We have to build them here. But it just speaks to that issue.

You may have also noted on the issue of mental health that there was a recent announcement in Vancouver on serious addiction and mental health. It had a small youth component. I want to speak briefly to that issue. The announcement, which was about a week ago, was a direct response to the crisis here in Vancouver, particularly a response to the Vancouver police department's 2013 report called Vancouver's Mental Health Crisis. Most of the focus of that VPD report was on the adult population, particularly in the Downtown Eastside, and some community safety issues there.

Last week the government announced some additional funding and resources for serious addiction in the mental health population, including anticipating that greater numbers of adults would be committed for care and would have to then be placed somewhere to receive that committed care. As part of that announcement, there was a small youth component, so I wanted to make the committee aware of that and that I'm tracking it and trying to understand what it will mean.

There is an inner-city mental health program. It was actually highlighted in our report that we spoke about. It's a small program, but it works with the homeless and unstably housed young people in the city of Vancouver. Last week the government announced there would be five new group homes, including one for the inner-city youth, with some additional resources for some intensive case management.

It's not clear when that will be built, what the model is, or whether or not that model will be expanded to other urban areas such as Kamloops, Victoria, Prince George
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and elsewhere, where there are similar needs.

That announcement last week also called for the Provincial Health Services Authority to establish a clinical expert panel. It's not clear at this point whether there will be a youth or a family focus in that clinical expert panel. Of course, I'll be advocating for that — that there is a strong family focus and that there is a strong clinical model that responds to some of those issues that we talked about.

One small component of the announcement was that there will be a new secure facility for detention of seriously addicted, mentally ill adults, and one of those facilities might be near a current youth facility. I'm certainly working closely with MCFD and asking Health about the types of protections that will be in place to make sure that the young people who are in the youth facility will have appropriate separation and protection from any impact caused by housing seriously addicted and mentally ill adults in a proximate facility. That's an area where there will be ongoing advocacy and reporting but continues to be an active area of work.

A final area I wanted to just touch down on by way of general introduction was just that today the B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition released its annual child poverty report card. They do that in November, pretty much always trying to hit around the anniversary of the 1989 pledge in the House of Commons to work in Canada to end child poverty by the year 2000. Well, we didn't make that deadline. Nevertheless, we still try and strive to understand the impact of poverty and how it affects children and families.

This year's report states that child poverty is up in British Columbia. So 18.6 percent of B.C. children were poor in 2011, up from 14.3 percent in 2010, using the latest figures from Statistics Canada. This is higher than any other province and more than five percentage points higher than the Canadian average. The reported poverty rate for young children under six was 21 percent, eight percentage points higher than the Canadian average.

The report card today also reports that one in five B.C. children lives in poverty. That's relative poverty. That's 153,000, up from 119,000 in 2010. And nearly one-third lived in families with at least one parent working full-time but still experiencing low income.

Shockingly, the report today shows that children in single-mother families had a 50 percent poverty rate in 2011, up from the 21 percent in 2010. That's a massive boost of child poverty for single-parent families.

First Call found that B.C. continues to have the most unequal distribution of income among rich and poor families with children, primarily due to the very low incomes for the poorest of poor families. The ratio of average incomes from the richest 10 percent compared to the poorest 10 percent was 12.6.

While the numbers may not always match exactly, study after study has been telling us the same thing, which is that B.C. has one of the highest rates of child poverty in Canada. The rate is increasing.

Not only is it about all of the impacts of that poverty for children in terms of their learning, their success, it speaks very much to the issue of the social distance between children and families throughout British Columbia and the enormous challenge that it faces as we look at how we are going to bridge that social distance through providing services that at least provide a promise of equal opportunity for all children, as opposed to destining those children at the lower socioeconomic scale to a life where they will be have-nots and their children will be have-nots.

Certainly, the effects of child poverty are undisputed, and what we're doing has not been working, if this latest data says much. I've certainly been calling for many years for the development of a solid plan to reduce child poverty, and I note that there's been no mention of poverty issues or income inequality issues in recent initiatives around, for instance, reforming the education system in British Columbia — a new vision for the education system. How will children in this cohort be supported by that plan?

I have had a chance to meet with the Minister of Education recently, raise these concerns with him and encourage him to consider how he will both support children in deep poverty — and also the double whammy when you have a child in deep poverty and a child with special needs — and encourage B.C. to have a stronger, clearer strategy across school districts on that front.

A final point just is on the issue of domestic violence. You'll note that at the last appearance I talked about how we were still waiting 12 months after the commitment to have a provincial domestic violence plan as a result of the report into the deaths of the three Schoenborn children.

The commitment was made to have a functioning provincial strategy by September 2012. I just note that we are now in December 2013, and we still do not have that strategy. I continue to push and prod government to develop that and release it.

I do note that there was a meeting last week by federal, provincial and territorial ministers of justice. They met in the north, as they routinely do, and among their agenda items were issues of domestic violence and violence against aboriginal girls and women. There were a number of valuable discussions held, including the development of a draft working paper that will be made public soon, on violence against aboriginal women and that calls for a very elevated degree of collaboration inside the court systems and in the administration of justice to protect aboriginal women.

The details around how that policy direction will be incorporated into a provincial plan or made meaningful for the lives of aboriginal women in British Columbia is unknown. I haven't seen any details of that because, in fact, we don't yet have a plan. I raise that issue again, be-
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cause it's a standing issue. It's as urgent today as when I released my reports on the deaths of the Schoenborn children and Christian Lee. I'm certainly hoping that there will be some progress.

On a somewhat parallel related issue, I also just wanted to report to committee members that I've had some very helpful early discussions with a group of researchers from the University of the Fraser Valley, who are working on research and investigating the impact of incarceration on children and how the children of incarcerated parents or released parents, post-incarceration, function.

I just raise that for the committee because you will note that Howard Sapers, the correctional commissioner for Canada, released his report today, indicating that the prison population in Canada is at an all-time high. His last report had it at 12,000. Today it's at 15,000. The number of prisoners in British Columbia under both provincial sentences and federal sentences continues to grow.

I was delighted to have that discussion with a group of researchers from the University of the Fraser Valley so we can talk about understanding the impact on families as that population continues to grow — how we can do some research and perhaps bring some findings to the committee and support policies and programs that might assist children when parents or a family member is involved with the criminal justice system.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the update. Just a couple of specific questions.

One around the residential redesign. You mentioned the issue of the new beds for youth mental health, and one of the areas that the minister, in estimates, in the summertime, mentioned was that they were going to be looking at every region having individual beds, through the residential redesign, for youth mental health, for special needs, hard-to-house. Then each region would have five beds available, and then that would be in place.

I wondered whether, though your work on residential redesign, you've been able to get any more specific information than I was around that happening. I had no timelines. No resources were in place. So I just wondered, though the residential redesign, whether there had been any information that you've been able to glean.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, first of all, on the matters that were announced by Health this week, which was really for the 19-and-over population — that group home initiative — I don't know when that will actually land. It's obviously welcome. That was a Health announcement, not an MCFD announcement, so it's not part of residential redesign. In terms of the residential redesign process and needing to have intensive therapeutic treatment-type foster care or beds, there have been no RFQs or announcements made to solicit applications or convert any facilities.

My understanding of the current state of affairs — although you'll have the ministry here tomorrow to speak more directly to it — is no action has been taken on the residential redesign in terms of actually beginning to align those resources across communities. The MCFD continues to be impacted by the core review budget issue. So they haven't made a move on that front.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a follow-up on the poverty issue. The ministry, as you know, did regional poverty strategies in this past year. When I asked at estimates, again, of the minister, I was told that a total of 72 families had been served by those poverty plans over a year. So 72 families, I think, when, as you mentioned, the 153…. I mean, if you look at the numbers for families living in poverty….

The ministry was due to have a follow-up to those regional plans. I just wondered, again, from the representative's office, whether you've had any discussion with the ministry about that and whether you get any indication about any further action on poverty reduction.

M. Turpel-Lafond: There hasn't been any further reporting to my office. I know that they changed the responsible lead staff person for that area recently and brought a new person into that area. I haven't seen any planning, and I can't speak to the 72 families that may have been the target of those poverty reduction strategies.

That was an initiative somewhat through UBCM. I think probably the question's better directed to the Ministry of Children and Families, because I haven't really seen any sort of tangible analysis or result at this point, which isn't to say that they may not be engaged in active work with a range of municipalities. I just haven't seen it connected to how resources will be commanded or how support will be moved forward.

Certainly, that was an initiative of the former deputy of MCFD, Stephen Brown, who has moved on to Health. He personally took quite a bit of leadership, as did the former minister, the hon. Mary McNeil. How that has transitioned into the current situation, I can't say.

M. Karagianis: Mary Ellen, you touched on the issues of domestic violence. Obviously, like you, we're waiting for the government to show us the strategy that they're planning, but you did touch on the issue of violence against women, especially aboriginal women.

Would you like to make any comment on the Wally Oppal report — it is something that we've had some great concerns about — and what impact that is having on the issues coming out of aboriginal communities and their concern about violence against women? Certainly, we
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know the huge impact this has on families and children in care in the aboriginal community as well. Could you make any comments about that report?

M. Turpel-Lafond: The only thing I would say is that the issues of missing women and issues around violence against aboriginal women and girls was part of the provincial-territorial meetings of ministers of justice. I think it just speaks to the issues of where a whole-government approach is so important, particularly around vulnerable persons. While there was a commission of inquiry and the report and so forth and recommendations are there, so many of these issues do cut across a range of government ministries, including MCFD.

Certainly, I have a very strong interest in seeing there be an effective domestic violence strategy. I continue to be very concerned about the fact that protective orders are not being sought, obtained and enforced on reserve in British Columbia and that other means of family policy are not being effectively addressed.

Those were not necessarily recommendations that came out of that inquiry. However, I think we know very well, from what we learned from that inquiry and from the horrific experience of families of the victims of Mr. Pickton, that many of those victims were women who came through the child welfare system, who were abused, who were neglected, who were basically spit out by many of their own families and communities into a position of deep vulnerability. Whether we're closing the gaps on those deep vulnerabilities for a current generation of aboriginal girls and women continues to be a major concern to me.

I certainly do not see an explicit and deliberate policy across government to do that. We've had some high-level discussions. What that means on the ground around the service footprint and approach is a challenge. I think some of those issues will be addressed today in some of the reports that we'll be talking about.

Thank you, Mary Ellen, very much for the update. Did you want to move straight to the second item, Special Report: Out of Sight? Did you want to move on to that one?

Representative for Children
and Youth Special Report:
Out of Sight: How One Aboriginal
Child's Best Interests Were Lost
Between Two Provinces

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I will. I'm just going to grab my other binder for one second.

This is a report that was released in September 2013. The report tells the story…. It's called Out of Sight: How One Aboriginal Child's Best Interests Were Lost Between Two Provinces. The report was a unique report in that it involved a child who was a child in care in British Columbia and a child that was transferred to another province with the consent of the provincial director of child welfare.

Further to the earlier question posed by a member of the committee, the circumstances of the mother of this child were very consistent with the circumstances of a vulnerable aboriginal woman living in the Downtown Eastside.

This child's mother experienced significant abuse and neglect as a child and came to British Columbia to escape that abuse from her home on a reserve in the prairie provinces and found herself very quickly falling into a position where she was using street-level drugs, was involved in survival sex work and trying to not only escape a horrific situation but trying to find some type of future for herself.

In the context of her life experience, she had a child. She was very clear that while supports were offered, her addictions were so overwhelming that she was not going to be able to raise the child. She's a very strong and determined person, despite all of the difficulties she's experienced.

I think the representative's office was very supportive toward the mother of this child and continues to be supportive toward the mother of this child. We have to always understand that mothers who experience deep addictions, are involved in the survival sex trade and experience violence are humans and deserve a great deal of understanding and respect.

With respect to her involvement in our investigation, she welcomed this report. She was very satisfied with this report. She was happy that the story could be told about what she had been through in a way that didn't condemn her life experience and also created an opportunity for a positive future for her and for her child.

In any event, finding herself in deep addiction and in a fairly unsustainable situation, where she's basically attempting to raise a child in a drug-fuelled environment where there is the presence of many dangerous people in the house — there are pimps, active users, a lot of dangerous situations — she essentially said to the Ministry of Children and Families: "I'm not going to be able to do this. You need to put my child into permanent care and find a better future for my child."

I think it's important to emphasize the pathways of how children come into care. It isn't always the ministry coming and knocking on a door and removing a child. For many vulnerable families, it's actually saying: "You know, I'm not going to be able to hide my child in the closet from what's going on here. I'm barely surviving. Please take this child."

The ministry took the child, and the little girl came into
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care. Shortly after she came into care, the ministry had to begin looking at what was going to happen. The child had been on their radar for about 17 months before the mother came to that position. They had been finding sort of temporary placements for the child, some supported community housing and so on.

The mother was also facing a lot of family violence, so she was moving around. Her violent partner had an ability to continually find her, get access to her and weasel his way back into her life and create a situation of violence. That, again, speaks to the agenda item we spoke about earlier, which is: not having an effective domestic violence strategy means many women's safety is on their shoulders, and they continue to bounce around, where perpetrators can easily find their way back into their lives and control and dominate them.

The child came into care. There began a process, about a six-month-long process, of discussion between the Ministry of Children and Families and the mom's home community, which was served by an aboriginal or Indian child and family service agency in Saskatchewan, about: "Is there a family member that could take the child?" or "Is there a resource in the other province?"

Although the mother was living here and a resident of British Columbia and had been here for a number of years, her mother was also formerly a resident of British Columbia and had lived most of her adult life in British Columbia, though she had died of an advanced illness caused by serious addictions herself — the infant's grandmother. They had strong ties to British Columbia. They weren't a transient population, by any means.

They made the contact back into the Saskatchewan First Nations community to see if there was anyone that could take the child or would be interested in being considered to take the child. Initially, they were told there was no one. Then they received a call back, saying: "Well, we found a grandfather, and we think we really should put him forward as a caregiver."

This began a process of the ministry eventually getting to court on a given day, dropping its own application for the child to be the subject of a continuing custody order and an order being granted to transfer guardianship under the Family Law Act to the grandfather, who would then take the child.

In the context of that period the grandfather came out and had a visit to meet the granddaughter for the first time, and there was an information-gathering process by the Ministry of Children and Families. They wanted to see a home study, for instance, on the grandfather. The agency in Saskatchewan had a home study, so they eventually forwarded the home study.

The home study, as you'll see in the report, was deeply flawed. It was dated. The ministry, like any time it does this work, sometimes relies on the work of others — an agency in another province, or a ministry in another province.

The lead official in the ministry here in Vancouver looked at that home study and sought some additional information. There were some concerns. The grandfather came out to visit the granddaughter…. Well, first of all, the home study said that the agency had no concerns about the grandfather. It certainly spoke to the fact that the grandfather had successfully parented his own children and was a resource in the community and that there was no criminal record.

We later learned through this investigation that, in fact, there is a criminal record of some 70 convictions on the grandfather, and that he hadn't raised his children, although his home with the step-grandmother had been a place for many children in the child welfare system to live — except this was the only child from British Columbia. But other children were living there.

On January 31, 2007, the provincial court in B.C. awarded custody of the child to the grandfather. The B.C. ministry withdrew its application and said they had no concerns about the caregiver — that the best interests of the child would be served by the child going with this grandfather.

In the period during which they were considering the grandfather as a suitable caregiver, the grandfather came out to British Columbia, as I said, to see the child. There were certainly some very serious concerns that should have been flagged for the Ministry of Children and Families about this visit. Like for instance, the grandfather was quite insistent that he should be paid the equivalent of two airfares.

It would appear…. The evidence is that he hitchhiked out to British Columbia with another child in care. He came out, and then he was given money. He reported to us that he bought 200 prescription drugs illegally in Vancouver with the proceeds and that his behaviour during the visit was quite unusual. He was quite aggressive. He was quite denunciatory toward people. The workers involved with the child, while concerned, continued along the path of having a transfer of custody to him.

Ultimately, when the court did transfer, officially, custody to the grandfather, the grandfather got on a plane the next day to take the child back to Saskatchewan, and the girl's mother actually went back with them. I just note that the girl's mother at the time was an active drug user. They got on a plane together with the child — with no social worker, no supervision and having had no Ministry of Children and Families worker actually visit the home that the child would live in, sleep in and grow up in and evaluate whether it was in the best interests of the child.

The first thing I would say is it's sort of nothing short of a miracle that this child actually lived. She's eight years old today. She's in foster care in Saskatchewan. We've had contact with her, but she has been through quite an ordeal. When she went to the grandfather's house, the mother stayed for a short period of time, was an active
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user, was quickly into a dispute with the family and the community and left the home.

She arrives in the family home in a small community in Saskatchewan. Within 18 months she's removed. By the time that 18 months has passed, the child had been confined basically to a dark furnace room in the basement of the home. She was scapegoated as an evil child, separated from other children. She was severely emaciated. She was suffering from malnutrition. She had a number of injuries, including an untreated fracture of the clavicle that continues to plague her with pain and discomfort to this day. She had bruising and scars on her head.

After the child was removed, it was discovered that she had been the subject of significant abuse during this 18-month period. In fact, the weight that she weighed when she left British Columbia…. She lost a significant amount of weight by the time that she was removed from that home 18 months later, all of which is detailed in the report.

The grandfather and his spouse were subsequently tried and convicted criminally for failing to provide the necessities of life to the child. They were sentenced to three years in prison in February 2012, and they abandoned their appeals in fall 2012.

This is a report where again…. For new members of the committee, occasionally it takes time to produce these reports. We'll have a reportable, or a case, but we have to allow the criminal justice system to do its work before we look at it. And while one can say, "Well, isn't it good that someone's held to account for the abuse of a child? — it's very significant that there are appropriate criminal prosecutions and accountability — the issue that's addressed in the report from the representative's office is about how this child found her way into the hands of this family and this grandparent.

There were three child welfare agencies — B.C.'s Ministry of Children and Families, Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services and an Indian child and family service agency — that essentially allowed the best interests of the child to play a second fiddle and had the child sent into an arrangement where she was in deep, deep jeopardy. There is no excuse for the abuse and neglect that the child suffered, and we know at whose hands the child suffered that abuse, but there's much to learn about the professionalism, the conduct and the accountability.

Certainly, in the context of the investigation the step-grandmother told our investigators that they viewed their home as sort of a dumping ground for children, that many children were placed there, that they were overwhelmed and that they were not able to meet the needs of children. I think this is a not uncommon experience, where you have very, very vulnerable people given a number of children and not able to support them and no watchful role with respect to child welfare.

In terms of the lessons that we can learn from this experience, there are a number. First of all, there was a breakdown on multiple levels. There was a failure to keep the best interests of the child as the paramount consideration. If you take the best interests of the child, you would in fact have a thorough home study. You will visit the home in which the child will live, and just like any prudent parent, you will want to see where the child will sleep and grow up — possibly, go to school — and who will be caring for the child.

The MCFD relied far too heavily on information coming from a Saskatchewan First Nations child welfare agency, an agency that was known to the government of the time to be in rather complete crisis. It had really no file-keeping, no recordkeeping. Whether or not there were other intakes of abuse on this child during the 18 months that she was there, there is evidence that some people called. There could have been 25 intakes, but there were no records kept around who called and when they called and what happened.

Certainly in the context of the investigation, we had very strong cooperation and openness from the ministry there — but, at the same time, very disturbing because the openness was: "Well, we knew this agency wasn't functioning."

Of course, then the issue is, well, provincial governments are responsible for quality services and quality assurance for our First Nations child welfare agencies delegated under their provincial system. And when you know that agencies don't function, what do you about it? Well, in this instance it didn't appear that they did very much of anything. The practice fell very far below the standard expected. Even to this day, we don't know who completed the home study. It's not signed. Did they know how to do a criminal record check? Apparently, they didn't.

Yet when we investigated the files in the agency that we could find, it became pretty clear that there were files suggesting that the caregiver had a deep child welfare history and was likely not a suitable caregiver for children. There had been intakes, including…. After the child was placed there, the home was closed as an intake or a resource for other children, yet no action was taken for this child.

In terms of B.C. MCFD, a number of key themes come forward. B.C. didn't insist on a proper home study or a complete criminal record check. They didn't dig deep enough to look at a grandfather who himself was in deep addictions. The grandfather admitted to them, in the sort of screening process, that he had been an addict, but there was no real investigation.

I mean, having an addiction, the stage which you may be at in your addiction is a pretty serious issue around child welfare. You need to tweak it. You need to look at how deep and sustained it is. Is this a lifelong, end-stage addiction process, with an addiction to what substances?
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Will there be some supervision, monitoring, some random testing to see what is happening? Certainly, when you have a caregiver with serious addictions, you need to pay very careful attention to whether or not there's going to be neglect of a child.

Once MCFD decided to support the grandfather's application for custody, it appears that they didn't pay a lot of attention to the strange behaviour that he had, or other things, and that the child was fairly easily passed over to an unsuitable caregiver — failing to document the history, failing to insist that there be a follow-up at the other end.

This is a child, as you can imagine — born to a mom experiencing active street-level drug use — that would have been born with significant medical needs, needing to be assessed pretty carefully and followed pretty carefully. There was no package, if you like, sent with the child, saying: "Here's her complete medical screening and her needs."

We detail in the report quite a bit about what her needs were. But obviously, by the time she becomes school-aged, there are going to be some real serious concerns about possible developmental delays and other things which will require intervention and support.

After the child was placed in the grandfather's home for a period of time…. The child never had a medical visit, for instance, during that 18 months — well, I guess, probably not, if she was confined to the basement, in any event.

The child never had a medical visit, and the grandfather actually called back to MCFD and said: "I don't know how to get this child to a medical appointment because I don't have a health card." And they were: "Well, you have full guardianship. We transferred everything with you." But the grandfather was so low-functioning that he couldn't even get the health card sorted out — probably because of his addictions — to get the child to see a physician.

Again, MCFD didn't have a follow-up. They didn't say: "Please tell us in six months. How did that work out? How did that relationship go? Is it working well? Is the child safe? Is the child well?" There was no follow-up. There was no due diligence on the part of B.C. to look at it.

As I said, we visited with the child. Despite everything she's been through, she's showing a lot of resilience. She's in a stable foster home. I hope that she'll have contact with her siblings in British Columbia and that she will be supported in the future.

I've had discussions with the Public Guardian and Trustee in Saskatchewan about whether or not there should be appropriate action taken to protect the child's civil rights — in particular, recovering under criminal injuries compensation for her circumstance, and so on. They haven't taken any decision on that, but I expect she's going to continue to face challenges into the future.

The report's recommendations are not numerous. They really speak about interprovincial work in child welfare.

First of all, the importance of…. The jurisdiction that has the child — in this instance British Columbia — has a responsibility for the best interests of the child and not saying: "Well, we have somewhere to send the child. Someone else is going to worry about it." The jurisdiction that has control of the child has that due diligence and that responsibility.

There's no need to change the legislation here. The legislation is crystal-clear. It's the practice that was seriously flawed.

Furthermore, I report in this report that we actually do not know or track in Canada how many children are transferred from province to province. That's a concern, because B.C. is frequently what I will call a sending province, as opposed to a receiving province.

B.C. is a receiving province in the sense of…. Sometimes very vulnerable people escaping a difficult situation may think they're going to find a new future in British Columbia. But we're a sending province in the sense that we disproportionately send children back to other jurisdictions, primarily the prairie provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

That sometimes has a dynamic in and of itself, which is: "We're just sending children back, and whatever happens somewhere else, happens somewhere else." Albeit that is fine and well, there still is the duty of the best interests of the child.

We don't track. We don't know how many other children are in care of the minister and the director of child welfare in British Columbia but are living elsewhere in Canada.

As a result of this report, I certainly encouraged the provincial director of child welfare to look carefully at the files. Ask the staff in the Ministry of Children and Families: "Do you remember sending a child? What happened to that child?"

Not surprisingly — because staff in the Ministry of Children and Families, particularly on the front lines, are very diligent people with long memories about the children that they work with — they identified a number of children that British Columbia had lost contact with who continue to be in the care of the director and for whom support was transferred somewhere else. We're not really sure how decision-making has happened in the lives of those children.

The director has been taking a stronger interest in trying to sort that out — including, I know, in the case of at least two children, sending staff from the ministry here in B.C. out to connect with those children and sort out what has happened to them as well.

This case, again…. While there may not be a large number of children, it is emblematic of a group of children for whom British Columbia has responsibility, sends it out and for what happens.
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At the same time, we are a receiving province. We do receive children under interprovincial orders. Certainly, there are issues about that.

There are a number of children, as I have indicated to committee members before, who are living in British Columbia unaccompanied but have courtesy supervision by the child welfare system. For instance, they're residents of the north or they're residents of another province, and they're living in a foster arrangement in British Columbia because there are no services in their province.

This is happening increasingly in different places. There are different dynamics in the eastern part of Canada. In the western part of Canada it's another thing altogether.

Obviously, I did the report Who Protected Him? — about the boy that was tasered. There was some discussion about sending him, for instance, to Alberta to obtain treatment, the type of treatment I just described earlier that doesn't exist in British Columbia. If he would be sent there, then he would be an interprovincial transfer.

I think we just need to understand that the responsibilities around best interests of children inform our policy here. The recommendations speak to the role and taking a strong role by the Saskatchewan director of child welfare to have an effective interprovincial protocol for the transfer of children. That protocol is out of date and needs to be looked at again, and it needs to be updated.

The directors of child welfare from across Canada — I've had a chance to talk to them. I'll meet with them, as well, to discuss this report. They've discussed the report. They welcomed the report, actually. They welcome the opportunity to strengthen this area.

Reporting and knowing how many children come in and out. This is, again, an area where I'd like the ministry to regularly report to the public on its performance and its accountability. How many children are coming in for courtesy supervision? How many are going out? What is the follow-up?

I also recommended, not surprisingly — as you could tell, probably, by my narrative — what's obviously so important for the best interests of a child, and that is proper and thorough assessments of the caregivers who will take care of the child, including whether they're known to child welfare, whether they personally have a child welfare history.

I'm not saying that someone with a child welfare history can never have a child placed with them. They may be able to have a child placed with them. They may be a very different person than they were at one time. They may have supports. It's hard to tell. You need to really look carefully at these issues. You need to assess it. A criminal record check must happen.

A home visit must happen by a B.C. delegated social worker to see where the child will live. It is not sufficient…. I don't think the standard of care of any parent in British Columbia would be to send their child somewhere else without knowing and providing assurance about where their child will live and if they'd be supported.

MCFD has indicated to me that they have accepted the recommendations in the report. The release of this report was unique. Involving a child in another jurisdiction…. Although it wasn't a joint report, we worked very closely with the Saskatchewan advocate, Bob Pringle. We released the report in a joint release — British Columbia, with a video hookup to Regina. The Saskatchewan advocate was in Regina.

The Saskatchewan advocate is advocating for the child, so we worked carefully together as offices and collaborated together. We met senior staff in government there together. These are issues that cross boundaries. We had a very good working relationship and a positive working relationship, which I'm really grateful for. And the Saskatchewan government was very open to accepting these recommendations as well.

I know that at that provincial directors table there will be at least two provincial directors — Saskatchewan and British Columbia — that will take a strong interest in improving these issues.

Now, because this was a First Nations child…. Although this is anecdotal, in our analysis of the children who are transferred from British Columbia to Saskatchewan, to Alberta, to Manitoba and all around these various provinces, it is indicated to us that they are disproportionately of aboriginal background and primarily First Nations children, where families are in different provinces, in different jurisdictions and travelling back and forth.

As a result of that…. Although I don't have oversight of the federal government, of course — I'm sure they would welcome that — in any event, I do have a very positive and good working relationship with the federal minister and the ministry of aboriginal and northern affairs.

I did have a chance to meet with the federal minister about this report and the senior staff in the federal ministry to talk about the concerns I had about First Nations children. They are frequently the most vulnerable children transferred into the most vulnerable of circumstances without any tracking or any support.

What can be done? Certainly, I did make a recommendation. I sent the report to the minister and met with him, met with his staff and did make a recommendation that they look at some type of federal initiative, whether it be an Indian child welfare act or what have you to allow for stronger accountability for First Nations children within First Nations communities — and, more broadly, from a national perspective.

Where that goes, I don't know. I just flagged that issue and raised it as an issue of concern.

So that gives you a bit of a summary. Again, there's
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great more detail in the report, but I will stop and take any questions that you might have.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your report. A couple of specific questions. I wondered whether you felt you learned during the report why the ministry looked at Saskatchewan when this family had such a lengthy history here in British Columbia. What was their rationale? What was their thinking in looking to Saskatchewan? That's one question.

My second question would be: have you been able to determine that checks and balances are in place in the ministry now so this situation won't happen? Are there requirements for home studies to be done in person by ministry staff? I guess a follow-up to that would be: have there been any recent cases so you're able to see whether a new protocol or a new system in places as per recommendations is actually being followed?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, I'm glad that the ministry accepted the recommendations. But they did tell me pretty straight up when they accepted them: "We're not sure we're going to be able to have everybody go visit the homes and do that type of work because we're not sure about our funding and the availability of our workers." So I put that out there to say: "Well, if you can't have people do the work, then the work will not get done."

Again, it's an appropriate question for you to direct to the ministry. I'm certainly in the "We accept your recommendations in principle, but putting them into practice requires something else," so I need to see the practice. The protocol has not been improved yet, so that's an unfinished business item.

I also recommended — this speaks very much to the issue that we'll talk about, I guess, in the next report and, more generally, about aboriginal children in British Columbia — that that interprovincial protocol include the aboriginal delegated agencies, because the aboriginal delegated agencies did not seem to be aware of the existence of a protocol.

In fact, when they looked at transferring this little girl into the area where services were in the hands of an Indian child and family service agency, the agency actually wrote to MCFD in advance and said: "We will make no effort to support this child after she's here. We have no money, and we will not take any effort to support her."

I took that up pretty strongly with the child welfare agency there and other delegated aboriginal agencies to say: "When you're mandated to provide service, you have to provide service. You can't write letters that say, 'We have financial problems. We can't do anything.'" There may very well be financial issues. The ministry, again in the B.C. context, has not sat down with the delegated agencies here and talked about this case. I look forward to talking to them. I do talk to them regularly.

There were concerns. Not all delegated aboriginal agencies are struggling like this particular one has. But the framework of everyone actually being in a seamless child welfare system…. This is a problem. People do not realize it's a seamless child welfare system. Children are living in an urban centre. They're living on reserve. They're sent to another province. People can have control, authority, be licensed, sanctioned, but two things have to govern. One is that the best interests of the child has to be foremost, and secondly, you have to be connected to others.

So whether B.C. MCFD has digested that and taken that forward — I would say they haven't at this point. They will have a lot of work to do to get to that point.

D. Donaldson: Thanks for the report. I had some questions that were coming up about other examples and tracking numbers, but you pretty clearly put forward that we don't, in your words, know or track transfers in the province here.

I would also suggest, on your anecdotal evidence, that the percentage of children in care in B.C. who are aboriginal and saying that many of these transfers might involve aboriginal children…. The Yukon, as well as the prairie provinces, is also a likely place where some of these transfers might occur, especially with Tlingit and Kaska children.

One thing you alluded to that I wanted to ask you about was: do you have any sense in these transfers if any of the transfers are taking place because the children are being sent elsewhere because the type of care that's needed for the child is not available here?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, the transfer here was really a family-driven one. Again, we really need to pay strong attention to the best interests of a child. It was a period where there was a desire to reduce the number of children in care, and the idea of having a family member who could care for an aboriginal child was almost like a romantic notion. Like this wonderful grandfather appears, and it's great. Let's have the child with the grandfather. It sounds so good. The Ministry of Children and Families is all about finding that forever family and being together.

These are important principles, right? There's no question. But behind it there's got to be some rigour. The challenge we found….

Again, we told the grandfather story quite a bit here. He was a person that went through residential school, struggled with very serious addictions, and he too was of the view like "I don't know why I have these children. I can't manage this."

The idea of having an approach to the welfare of children today without really rigorously looking at it because somehow you think that there's a category of people for whom, whatever, we just don't do the same standards….
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That doesn't really work for children.

In fact, on the First Nations side I think that there even is an element of discrimination to that, almost sort of saying: "If it's an aboriginal child, we don't look at it because we just assume it's all fine." I think that in terms of the First Nations child welfare community, there's been a very strong response to the report, saying: "Yes, actually, we really need to have rigorous good child welfare work across the board, and are families able to do this?"

Because we're dealing with significant fallout from the residential school system, we want to keep children connected to their families and their communities, but maybe what we should have done is had a very strong accountability for, for instance, the First Nations leadership. Maybe they should have had a very strong oversight of how that child was doing. Maybe they should have been getting regular reports and had been standing in the court when the best interest of the child was to be considered to say: "Well, we'll look at it, but we've got to keep the child connected to our culture and community." So there are different ways to achieve it.

Now in terms of sending children out for care, if you like, I think it's a very difficult question. Again, the data's very poor. There's no question in my mind that in many of these instances…. A worker has a very heavy caseload. Once you can say: "Well, there's someone that's going to take X. That's off my caseload. I'm on to the other thing…."

So when you have a crisis-driven area in child welfare, when there's a lot of pressure…. There are themes that come down from the top, which are: "Reduce the number of kids in care; reduce the number of kids in care. Aboriginal family reunification is the number one issue for us. Just find the family members, and don't look at them too closely." These are some of the messages that were operating at the time.

I think that this shows the safety gaps that occur with that. It's a gap. There are very patchy services and supports for a medically fragile child who was sent into that situation and received no medical care for a period of time. The neglect…. It's pretty clear that a caregiver with serious street-level prescription drug addictions to the extent that he had was not going to be able to meet the needs of a child. That should have been pretty clear in plain sight. So all of these issues somehow could be set aside and another logic operate.

At the same time, I have to say that had we not done this investigation, no one would know about this case. So it speaks to it — not to the representative's office or whatever. But it lends credit to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia having a representative's office that can actually look at these issues and produce some meaningful…. This case was not the subject of an internal review in British Columbia. It was not the subject of an internal review in Saskatchewan. There was no learning from this case, and there would have been no learning from this case unless a report was published that allows us to come together and learn from it.

This is a key issue — of course, no child's injury should go unexamined — that opportunity to really look at it. A positive part of that is that people welcomed it and have welcomed that discussion. It's kicked off a different discussion about the needs of First Nations children, and I'm glad for that. I think that's long overdue.

D. Plecas: The member opposite, Carole James, was noting aloud about what the thinking was that went into this case. You can't help but wonder whether or not there was any thinking whatsoever that went into it.

I'm just wondering. You alluded to the fact that it's…. You don't necessarily know how often this would occur, but given how incredulous this is, in terms of what this person or persons concluded in their work, you have to wonder: is this really a case of a single person or persons completely not doing their job, or is it a lot of people not doing their job? I mean, it's one thing that people make mistakes, but this is really over the top.

I note page 25 of your report. You call attention to a recommendation from this person or persons that states the foster parents are "very capable of providing a home that is loving and safe for children." It's unbelievable.

I guess my question to you is: to what extent is this a function of individuals within the ministry being what we might say is incompetent — completely incompetent? Is there any indication that there's any great number of them, or is it something more than this?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'm going to invite Bill Naughton as chief investigator to take a bit of a stab at that because it's certainly an area of significant debate among us.

B. Naughton: I think as our investigators worked through this process, one of the things that struck…. Obviously, there's a cascade of errors and a number of things that are occurring here.

I think, for example, one of the issues we really wrestled with was the issue to which it was reasonable for B.C. child welfare authorities to rely on the work of another agency in another province. Typically, as professionals are interacting across boundaries, it's not unusual for you to rely on the work of others. I think that's pretty accepted professional practice in many cases.

What struck us here is that when you actually looked at the quality of the work, for example, that was coming from the delegated aboriginal agency in Saskatchewan, it clearly didn't meet a standard that you would have expected.

I think there were…. Was there a series of bad decisions made that could have been related back to base
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competencies around practice? Absolutely. I think there were some other dynamics in play at the same time, including the fact that the grandfather in his community was a figure of some substantial influence.

While it's difficult for us to say to what extent this was an issue of incompetence on the part of the agency that was actually doing the home study…. Was it pure incompetence, or was it also a reflection of this individual's influence in the community — a small community where he was obviously in a position to bring some pressure to bear?

I think it's difficult for anyone to imagine that someone with 70 criminal convictions is not notorious in a community of this size. I mean, the unanswered question was: is it incompetence, was there an element of corruption, or both?

I think it would be impossible for us to answer that question, given our investigative limitations on this, but clearly there was a cascading series of bad decisions and numerous hints along the path. The grandfather was very forthright with our investigators that he was high during the court process when custody of the child was being given to him.

I mean, there were pretty clear things going on that I think would have been triggers for further scrutiny, but those opportunities were missed.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I would just say, as a corollary to that, that that is a pretty dangerous combination: an individual that might have some standing in a small community, may have some political or other influence that can push a system; secondly, not doing thorough and accountable work, with home study that is — I said euphemistically, I guess — sort of like written in crayon, because it can't possibly be taken seriously. It's never been signed.

Furthermore, incredulity around the work of the lead guardianship social worker in British Columbia to excuse and overlook what is obviously very odd behaviour.

First of all, anyone who hitchhikes out to Vancouver to take a child back is someone who we probably should say: "Do you have a driver's licence? If you don't have a driver's licence, why don't you have a driver's licence? Why are you hitchhiking? By the way, if you're demanding two return airfare tickets, is this about money, or is this about the child?"

I think this is the business of child welfare. You have to ask hard questions. You have to ask hard questions. I'm not saying be suspicious and untrusting — you should be strengths-based, without a doubt — but you have to be fairly wily about what's actually going on, because some people are not in the position to raise children. Maybe they were before. Maybe they will be later. But you need to have a sophisticated and determined focus on the best interests of this child.

This is, as Bill said, a cascade of issues. But behind it, it speaks to one thing, which is not only can a child be transferred into the hands of an unsuitable caregiver but can be invisible in a very small community with someone who must have been notorious and also had six other children.

That speaks to a broader issue around aboriginal child welfare, which is the need to have strong service, strong accountability, strong collaboration and good leadership on all sides — very strong leadership prepared to ask hard questions for children, not placate the adults.

J. Rice: Well, a lot of my questions — I was going to say — have been answered, because they were similar to Doug's. But they haven't really been answered, because the answer is: "We don't know."

If these types of situations…. We're not tracking them. We don't know how many there are. How did this come about then? How did this happen? Why this case?

M. Turpel-Lafond: The case was brought to my attention by an individual who thought that it should be carefully looked at.

J. Rice: May I ask another one? So talking about not placating adults — I know this is not a politically safe question — but if there's a two-tiered system between putting aboriginal kids in aboriginal care and we seem to sort of have a lesser standard, what would be the alternative? Wouldn't there be less children in care — period — if they…? What would be the solution?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Aboriginal children have a right, even under the CF&CSA, to be connected to their family and their community. And as we know, too many aboriginal children are in care. But aboriginal children need to be served by robust and strong agencies with the resources and the services that they need and by agencies and service providers that, while they can keep a child connected to their language and their culture in the community, also have to provide service and be connected to a mainstream service system.

The child has to still have a medical appointment in a provincial health care system. The child has to be seen and be supported and be doing well. I think the challenge is that the systems were not designed so that there would be these kinds of safety gaps. The systems were designed so there would be high-quality service.

In fact, an aboriginal child welfare system could be a stronger and better system than the non-aboriginal system. That has been the motivation and intent. It just hasn't parlayed into practice, and it's inconsistent. So in British Columbia as well — and we'll talk about this in our second report — we have 23 delegated agencies with various levels of function, accountability, performance, funding. We'll talk about that further, I think, in that report. But I can only describe the policy guiding
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this area as chaotic.

It needs to come down to some very basic fundamentals around best interests of children. If best interests of children don't govern and you don't have a sufficient number of people not only at a centre office making sure things are coordinated and having good relations and follow-up with children, these are the types of situations that can occur.

And they're not uncommon. This isn't the first child in British Columbia that was injured — an aboriginal child that was injured. We do investigations into reports of deaths and injuries all the time. We'll do an investigation into the suicide death of an aboriginal teenager, which will probably speak to some of these similar themes, which is there's no service footprint to support the child. It's basically a black-hole situation, but it's an aboriginal situation, so therefore it must be fine.

I think this is a very fundamental area that requires deeper questioning. It wasn't the subject of a recommendation, but we did talk about the federal role. How can we strengthen the leadership to be able to really take forward the issues around children — not take forward their own leadership issues but the issues for children?

M. Karagianis: Just a couple of brief questions. First — and I don't see that you've touched on it here in the report — how much of the sort of lack of oversight and attention at the time that the child was originally taken under consideration by the ministry may have been due to heavy caseloads, understaffing?

We know that there have been serious concerns with understaffing and heavy caseloads within the ministry. Did that contribute in any way to this?

Secondly, is it your sense that now that the ministry has seen this report and understands this, has there been some follow-up at this point on other children that may have been transferred — or any re-examination of some of the activities that have taken place?

I note that this story began in 2008 really, so there have been a number of years where other transfers are quite likely to have occurred. Has the ministry taken any steps at this point that you're aware of to begin to review that and go back and perhaps provide some oversight, even at this late time, or examine any of the circumstances around those children who might have been transferred?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, first of all, with respect to workloads, I don't think there were significant demands on the workload here. The decision whether or not to send someone to do a home visit…. It wasn't clear why…. They just didn't do it.

I think what the bigger factor was, was that at the time they were sort of in the throes of this transformation exercise. They were sort of a bit naive or getting a lot of messages from the senior part of the ministry. Again, what the senior executive in the ministry says does affect people. If they say, "Well, do reunification," people do reunification — as opposed to: "Do proper child welfare in the best interests of a child." That's got to be the message. I think there was some influence there.

In terms of the tracking and so on, I just point out to committee members that we track interprovincial transfer of tractors, cars, liquor — in fact, iPods, cell phones. We track interprovincial transfer of almost every industrial agricultural good — ag marketing board. We used to have a wheat board. That's not there anymore, but they still track interprovincial transfer and international transfer of wheat.

But we do not track the children. I think that really says something about the fact that we have not got our act together to do it right. That has to change, and I think the ministry has got to come on that. I think B.C. could be a leader.

I'm really pushing the provincial director, the deputy and the senior executive of MCFD to tell us how they're going to do that — step up on that issue. I think it's essential that they receive not only pressure to do it but that they devise the leadership to do it — at least for the children that they have control over at some point, that they are sending out or receiving in. It can be done. It's not difficult. It can be done. If people want to do it, it can be done.

We certainly track, as I say, interprovincial transfer of other things that while they might be very cherished, they should not, probably, in the ultimate scheme of things, be as cherished to us as our children.

M. Stilwell: Thank you for the report. You've touched on a lot of important issues. One of the things you've described, which is true for these kinds of cascades of errors where at every stage along the way there was an error or error in judgment…. I'm interested specifically in MCFD policies and procedures, because there should be — and is there? — a process where a worker can stop the line. I mean, this grandfather who was clearly…. He's described as behaving erratically at his visit. Who had the responsibility for stopping the line?

I do take your point that when there is a message to reunify families, it does sound so Disney-esque. There is a lot of…. You bring your own preconceptions, and that's when you overlook and make these judgmental errors. But somebody should have had the responsibility of saying: "Everything has to stop because, clearly, this person is behaving in a way that is inappropriate." What are the policies to stop the line?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, in this circumstance, you have a guardianship social worker, and you have a team leader or supervisor. The supervisor's role is that role. In this instance, the supervisor said: "Just let it go."
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M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, exactly. The whole point of the report is actually…. You're right. Your earlier point that you made about…. MCFD has to meet its own standards and policies — standards and policies that people are trained to and understand.

This drives me back to a theme that I see in some of the reports — not everywhere — which is leading me to think about a project for the future, which is really surveying and working with social workers, maybe one year after they've been on the job, about: "Have you got adequate training to do your work? Are you working effectively? Are you well-supported? What do you know?"

Also, supervisor delegation. Supervisors need to be separately delegated and accountable to take supervisor training and not be supervisors unless they can do the job. That's that systemic issue around how you control it. What is the job? The job is the best interests of children. We cannot lose focus on what the job is.

I realize that looking at practice in reports like this is really difficult. We don't name people. That's not appropriate. We're not naming and blaming people. We're trying to learn.

But what does give me some positive comfort is that when something like this comes out and it's really used as a learning opportunity, so many workers in the field say: "Oh, my goodness. I've got five kids we transferred out. If my supervisor will permit me today, I am going to try and track them down." This is, again, where a supervisor says: "Please encourage your guardianship staff to do this." Or maybe there are some retired social workers that remember that, and we need to come back and look at it. That is so crucial.

There is a narrowness of thinking that takes hold when there isn't strong provincial guidance. At the time that this was going on, the office of the provincial director of child welfare was being shut down in the idea that the ministry would be transformed and that maybe it wouldn't even do child welfare. So the sort of makeover projects that people bring to that ministry have been challenging.

We want good, stable services based on core functions, with people qualified and accountable to do the work, and we need reporting, including this committee.

The Members of the Legislative Assembly need to know that from the $1.2 billion that go into MCFD, something positive comes out. And I'm sure it does. I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm sure it does. But I also, as representative, have to convince people in the ministry: "You need to speak about what you're accomplishing for these children that are coming in and out of the province, that are deeply vulnerable children." It's one thing to say: "They're all taken care of. Don't ask us any questions." It's not going to be effective.

M. Stilwell: If I can just add as kind of a tactical, more detailed thing. I agree that naming and blaming people is not the point of these reports. At the same time, a signature has to mean something.

So it still comes back, to me, that the person on the ground had reason to recognize that nothing should happen. If they didn't want to go ahead and the supervisor said, "Let it go," the answer is: "Well, you sign it." Right? There has to be a process where the document can be followed into the root cause. Otherwise, it gets to be unsolvable.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think if you look at page 24 of the report — and we did this on purpose — and if you look at the houses along the left-hand side, in March, "Child removed and placed in foster home," from that point all the way over, there were multiple chances to stop it. Multiple chances.

When you have an unsigned report, an unsafe report, you follow up. Furthermore, one of the things we did in this report is that we actually spoke quite a bit about what best practice would have been — if you look at pages 26 and 27.

It's so crucial, again, to get…. Maybe some of the social workers are not trained. Maybe some of the workers in the delegated aboriginal agencies, where they have an exception and they don't have to have the same qualification and training, need training.

The difference between…. You can see this on page 27: "Occasional substance use," "substance use with negative effects on behaviour," "substance use with serious social/behavioural consequences," and then "substance use with severe social/behavioural consequences" because of chronic and prolonged use.

Grandpa was in that category No. 4. He wasn't an occasional user. Chronic end-stage addiction, street level, purchasing prescription drugs, taking whatever. And so the issue there…. Again, I'm sympathetic to the grandfather's situation. He's an addict. He is not going to be able to provide for the interests of the child.

Social workers need to know: what do you look at? How do you do it? How do you do this work? Well, this isn't new. This is social work practice. Are the social workers not trained, coming in, on the job? Are they not supported and trained?

Parental addictions and caregiver addictions is a major issue of vulnerability to children, not only for neglect but their own later addictions. So it's an area where…. We put material in the report in part because we're hoping that people will read it and remember: "Oh yeah, I think there was a report somewhere that says what you look at — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5." This is a No. 5, which should have had some big flags for every worker, supervisor and others.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I'm going to ask a question now, before we go around the second time. I know we've
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got some people that are wanting to ask questions for the second time.

My question is related to what you just mentioned. I see in a lot of your reports this recurring theme. One of the recurring themes is either a lack of, as you say, leadership, professionalism or accountability of either managers or social workers or both.

My question is: where is the system breaking down with regards to the professionalism of social workers? Are we just breeding out a bunch of people that just ticker-tape? You've said that even the basic questions…. Or if there's a form that they have to fill out, it wouldn't have even been accepted in professional standards.

I also think that these individuals — aren't they master's educated? Maybe not in some of the delegated agencies. Maybe that's the problem. But I would assume that these social workers themselves and their bosses are lacking a whole level of professionalism and shouldn't even be allowed on the job.

So where are we going here? Should we be talking to the Ministry of Advanced Education and saying: "We've got to up the ante with regards to the professionalism of these social workers before they even get hired or graduate"? It's not just this report. It's all of the reports. There seems to be some recurring theme here that there seems to be no professionalism among social workers.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think your comments are correct in the sense that the quality of work that's done by people who hold these enormously important jobs is crucial. In terms of the reporting that we've done, there are concerns, but the quality is frequently there. But the supervision and the support…. Again, I just want to say that of the 12,000 advocacy cases that we've had, close to half of those come from front-line social workers who say: "We can't get this to work properly. Help." That's not a good sign.

I think your issue is a very important one. I have encouraged the ministry in my entire term as representative to have a functional forum with the deans of social work, the colleges and universities that produce social workers in British Columbia. What is the curriculum? Are they preparing…?

Maybe there'll be a geriatric social worker, but for those who work with children and youth — and we want to recruit and retain people; this is an important area, a meaningful area, a great area to work in — what's the curriculum? What's the coordination? Is the ministry actually encouraging a pathway pre-employment…? You have to have a bachelor of social work. They're not master's levels.

Again, the second report will talk about removing the exceptions where you don't have to have the education. So getting the education. And then pre-employment, what training is offered? Post-employment, what training is offered?

Furthermore, the issue in British Columbia in my time as representative…. You know, we had — after, I think, 32 years — the College of Social Workers legislation, basically, had the Social Workers Act amended so that the college could be more active. Now, MCFD social workers are not required to be enrolled in the college. Mostly the social workers enrolled in the college are in hospitals and elsewhere. There is a big debate with the BCGEU and others about whether MCFD should require enrolment in the college because, "Could they be doubly disciplined?" for instance.

I think we really need to push that issue. I think they need to be professionalized. There needs to be a college. They need to have professional development. Also, MCFD needs to be clearer. Even right now, today…. I mean, you can ask them when they come tomorrow: what is the recruitment plan? Who is the person you want to recruit? What are you telling colleges and universities? What is your training plan?

These are the 101 issues of the ministry: who's doing your work, how are they doing the work, and how are they supervised and trained? But more importantly for our committee and for the public: what are you accountable for? An outcomes focus and a child's best interest focus have got to be key.

If I look — and I have, informally…. I haven't formally done it, although I may. It's not kind of outside my realm, but you're right: Advanced Education. I've gone to them, and I've said: "What is the qualification?" I've done this quite a bit on ECE. Early childhood education is an area where…. Who's an education assistant for a child with special needs? What's the requirement? Is there a standard requirement? Is there a standard curriculum? How do we support that?

We have a lot of issues with how children with special needs are treated in the classroom. Well, the qualifications, background and experience…. There are wonderful people doing the work, but it's all over the map. We don't have a system.

Can we work with our colleges and universities and find some pathway? When it comes to children, it shouldn't sort of be: "We all have children. Therefore, anybody can do the work." Actually, you need highly skilled, trained, organized, coordinated people, highly accountable, to do the work.

We need to support families, of course. Not all children are going to find themselves in the crosshairs of the child welfare system, but if they do, those families want proper service. You know, just like the mom of this girl, who we continue to be in touch with. I mean, she's devastated about what happened to her child. She even says: "When I made that decision to give my child over to someone who could take care of the child, I thought that would be better." You know, she's not happy. She's
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not happy with the outcome, and I don't think the public can be happy with it.

So your question is a very core question. We have to get behind some of those issues. What is taught? What is required? What are the core competencies, and what is the accountability? I certainly encourage you to address that with the ministry. But I think my office…. I probably have to look at that more rigorously, around what is being taught. Is it preparing students and young people to take up this career and to effectively function in this career?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Madam Chair, do you want to take the members who haven't asked questions first?

J. Martin: Mary Ellen, on a couple of occasions you've mentioned this isn't about naming or blaming. My question is: why not? You know, if you've got people whose conduct is hovering between neglectful and bordering on criminal, why not call them out, identify the rot that's in the system?

Obviously, there are systemic and structural issues that need to be addressed. That's one of the priorities of the committee — to fix those and remove those obstacles. But if we have individuals — and I'm sure your office knows who they are — let's call them out. I don't see the advantage to anonymity — protecting and not identifying these people.

I'd like you to name these people in the report. I want their names plastered everywhere. I know in some cases you've mentioned there was no signature, no one signed off. But where you have these people, I'd like you to call them out.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think the challenge is…. I mean, the statute…. Creating the representative's office — a very wise person reviewed the child welfare system. Ted Hughes is a wise and distinguished person, a distinguished British Columbian.

He really looked at: how are we going to get beyond things, including some of these issues? He called for a very active office to do this kind of work at a high level. But he felt very strongly that if we get into a system of having sort of a royal commission, where people are named and lawyered up and so on, it will possibly be harmful for a variety of reasons, including driving people out from the field, creating enormous stress, huge cost.

But I think you're right about the issue of accountability. Whenever we do an investigation, when things are found, we share that. We share that with the ministry, senior staff in the ministry, and we expect them to take appropriate action. If someone couldn't do their job for whatever reason, that has to be…. There are human resources issues that have to be addressed, and we feel very strongly that they need to act on that.

At the same time, I have to tell you that in the front line of the system they welcome this. They welcome this report because, while there are decisions that were made that were very inappropriate for this child and put her at great risk, there are people working in those offices who get up every day and want to do a good job. Where it isn't happening, they want it brought out and they want it addressed. I think that it's really important to respect the people that are doing the work and build on the strengths of people that really want it to happen.

Consequences have to happen. There's no question. There have to be consequences when someone doesn't do their job.

There are two kinds of consequences. There are the consequences: if someone can't do their job or didn't do their job, what happens? Then there's the other consequence, which is the civil remedy. When you transfer a child to an inappropriate caregiver, did we breach our duty of care to that child? I'm not saying that child is going to have a civil remedy in a lawsuit, but these are areas where we have statutory duties of care, we have responsibilities to keep the best interests of the child, and from the child's viewpoint, we need to strengthen the rights of the child.

I've thought a lot about this case to say: should we have a system where the child is separately represented?

When that court case went forward as a desk order and someone said "Everything's great" — it took all of five minutes; nobody looked at it — did the child need to have her own lawyer, who'd ask if this in the best interests of the child and who would have actually looked at it from her side? Or could the Chief of the child's community play that role? I don't know. Someone has to have really looked at the child, not the other interests. Maybe that would be helpful. There are ways to put strengths around children, which I think we really have to work on.

The desire to blame, if you like, is a human desire, I know. But from a system viewpoint, I have high regard for Mr. Hughes and how he saw the system working. I think we're much better able to motivate the system through learning, collaborating and moving forward than sort of the naming, blaming, shaming. That leads to a different crisis, where we won't get service. We've seen that in some places.

D. Barnett: Thank you for the report. I find it very interesting when we continuously talk about that it should be in the best interests of the child. I think we all agree with that. But I come from rural British Columbia, where
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we are different than an urban centre. We have good services, and we have, naturally, gaps in our services.

Some of the policies of…. I don't know whether they're government or they're the local service provider, but if you go from community to community, there are different methods of delivering services and different policies. You've got some foster homes, and they're good foster homes, that have lost children because of a policy where they may not have the culture or may not be delivering the culture of that child in the manner that their policy says it is. Yet they're loving parents.

I have seen children put into a motel with a parent who should not have that child, because of a culture policy. This, to me, is very disturbing. The child should get a sense of culture, but they should also have a good home to learn that in.

There are some very different methods of delivering services out there. I find that from one community to the other, where I come from, we have some real gaps and some real holes, and I'd really like somebody to come and take a look at what's going on. It really concerns me because the children do come first.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think you've touched on a very big issue. Again, I think we'll talk about it more in the second…. Our theme today will be addressed in the second report. A very, very essential finding of the second report which is a concern is that for aboriginal children in particular, being connected to their family and culture is essential — it's a right — but not when there's no service.

I'm not saying: "Don't connect." But where's the service that goes with it? I think that's the concern, if being connected to the family means you'll be put in a substandard motel where there's no kitchen and with a parent that's struggling. It seems like the good thing to do, but there are no services. There's no housing. There's no effective…. But out of this other environment…. I think that is a concern.

It's really about the best interests of the child, meaning: are we really getting at the issues? On the aboriginal issues, we'll talk more in the second report about some of the barriers that have been there and the work that has to be done.

There's no question in my mind that there have been transfers of children into situations that are not working. In fact, the children call me and say: "I don't want to move." In some instances, even in the delegated aboriginal agencies, they say to me: "I don't think we should move the child." There are very strong delegated aboriginal agencies that say: "The child's got strong connections here. Let's not move.... Let's find another path. Let's get these other things worked out."

There are good examples, but it requires acknowledging that culture is important. It's essential, but it has to come with services.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up on the discussion that's been happening around individuals and the shame and blame, as the representative mentioned, I believe strongly that the role of this committee and the role of the representative's office and, in fact, the role of all communities should be about accountability — not about shame and blame but about accountability.

Yes, the ministry has to be accountable for individual staff and decisions that they make, and there has to be some accountability there. That's their job. It's not our job to run the ministry, nor the representative's job. The government's job is to run the ministry and to be accountable. So there has to be accountability there for everyone — for the workers, for the foster families, for communities, for delegated agencies, for the ministry itself.

I think what's important…. I agree with the discussion that's occurred around accountability, not around shame and blame. But when it comes to accountability, let's remember, as well — I think we'll get into more of this discussion in the next report — that these are workers who are working within a system that has had constant change over the last ten years, that has a system of change that has not been clearly defined, that has not been outlined for the people working in the field. They've had different policies and different directions and different kinds of approaches to take on.

While I think it's important that we have this discussion about everyone's accountability, it's also important to remember…. If we're talking about systemic change, we have to remember that the ministry is in charge. The Ministry of Children and Families and this government are in charge right now of children and family services in this province. They have a responsibility to set out clear direction and to do follow-up. I think there's a theme here — I know we'll have more of a discussion this afternoon as a committee about that — about a lack of definition, of follow-up, on these recommendations.

Why can't the ministry say they're going to determine exactly how many children leave this province? That's not acceptable, that they can't tell us that. It's not acceptable that they don't have a clear policy in place that says: "We will check out a home if we're transferring a child." It's not good enough to say: "We're looking at residential redesign, but by the way, we don't have a timeline. We don't have resources. We don't have a direction we can give you."

I think it's really important as we look at the accountability piece that we remember that the ministry is in charge and you have workers working in a system where they're given different directives and different direction. Yes, they have to be accountable for their work, but we'd better have leadership from the top, and we'd better have a clear direction from the top that puts children and fam-
[ Page 90 ]
ilies first. We don't have that right now. That's part of the problem we're dealing with.

I'm sorry for taking a moment to talk about that. I will address it with the ministry, because I recognize it's not a question for the representative. It's a question for the ministry. I will raise it with the ministry as well.

D. Plecas: Mary Ellen, again, this is just for me another great report in a long line of what I would say are great teaching tools for us. We can learn a lot from them. One of the things I think might have been helpful here, just to drive the point home about how something was so very wrong, is for the report to say more about the criminal record of this person. My guess is, at 70 convictions…. I would be amazed if this didn't include repeated convictions involving violence. I wonder to myself if any one of those 70 convictions involved sexual deviance. I just think it would be good to include that.

Now, maybe, Bill, I'm sure you have knowledge about what was included on that record. I say that because one of the great proxies for predicting future behaviour is a criminal history, especially if somebody has 70. They probably have more than that as we're sitting here now, since a bit of time has passed.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the criminal history in terms of the grandfather was really related to addiction — significant addiction. His criminal history is not uncommon with someone of his age and era in terms of residential school — someone who had experienced a lot of addictions and trauma around this.

The criminal history — a lot of failing to attend and comply, but driving, including driving intoxicated with the child in the car. These are issues of concern. It was a continuous record.

I think one of the challenges we face with these reports…. First of all, it's not really the medical ethic of "do no harm." You have to bring information out, but it's quite likely that these grandparents will continue to parent other children. It's very significant that we be protective to some extent to a whole range of interests and concerns.

The criminal history was extensive. It was significant. The challenge was the point raised earlier by Bill, which is the agency saying: "We don't believe he has a record."

He may or may not have a record, but they have to have fingerprints to confirm it. But the agency interpreted it that he doesn't have a record. Being notorious in a small community — that someone was an addict, if you like — I think is well known. There's that issue of: how do we view these things? Is it that common that it isn't a matter of serious concern and reflection? There are really significant issues.

Not every criminal record will mean you can't be a caregiver of a child — of course not. You can mitigate issues when you look at a significant passage of time, supports, focus, whatever. But when you have an extensive and continual record relevant to caregiving for a child — namely, driving without a licence, driving under the influence with a child in care in the car — that becomes another matter altogether.

J. Rice: I think I was going to beat a dead horse. Because by the time I raise my hand, usually, it's kind of like we're onto…. I guess I was just going back to the blame and shame thing because I was getting really irritated with that. If this was just simply a worker not doing due diligence and needing discipline, then there wouldn't be this whole report or this whole investigative thing. For me, again, it just goes back to the system being flawed.

Every social worker I know, if they all have great intentions…. They all tell me they're stressed because they can't do their job as they're supposed to be doing their job. If they were to be disciplined for all the times that they're not doing exactly…. No one would work. They'd all be fired. Or they'd be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So it's unrealistic to blame an individual in this case. I was getting kind of choked about the whole "pick on the people."

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think there should be appropriate consequences for people that perform their job in a way that is such an abdication of responsibility that they need to have consequences. I don't have to report on those, but there should be. I take a very strong view about that. Believe me, if we see it, we bring it forward in every single instance.

But this speaks to a bigger issue, which is the responsibility at the administrative and at the executive level for a minister and a director of child welfare or a deputy minister, whether it's in this province or another province. If you have an agency that doesn't function and doesn't keep records and you know they haven't functioned for a period of time, why are they still an agency?

This is the challenge where I think the real quality…. There's no quality assurance, and you: "Oh well, we knew about this for a long…." Well, if you knew about it, why didn't you do something about it?

Furthermore, how did you know about it when you didn't produce a review or evaluation of it? And now that you have a review or evaluation, what will you do? "Oh, we're confident that we will sweep it under the carpet," or are we confident that we're actually going to bring it out and address it?

This is the challenge, because ultimately, accountability does sit here. You know, my role is really to bring it up to the Legislative Assembly and to bring it out into the public to say that accountability means you have to actually show what is the remedial plan to address it. Do you remove delegation from an agency that says it doesn't work?
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I reviewed, on page 31…. The Office of the Auditor General of Canada issued a report on March 31, 2009, about some of these programs, saying they were very concerned that there isn't quality assurance, that they don't meet provincial standards. If that's because they don't have the money, they don't have the workers, something has to be done in those provinces, including British Columbia. I think that that pressure and responsibility is on leadership that is ready, so how they address it will be crucial.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Seeing no other hands up, thank you, Mary Ellen, very much, for that report. Obviously, you hit a chord with the committee members, and there has been lots of discussion. Certainly, I'm confident that a lot of this will come up in our discussions tomorrow with the ministry.

We have just a little bit of a housekeeping thing. It's almost 11. Do you want to have a five-minute recess? Then we'll at least get your presentation done and then maybe do the questions after lunch.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We're back, so we'll leave it up to the representative, Mary Ellen, to begin on her second report, When Talk Trumped Service.

Representative for Children
and Youth Special Report: When
Talk Trumped Service: A Decade of
Lost Opportunity for Aboriginal
Children and Youth in B.C.

The second report — which, actually, as I said earlier, is quite linked in terms of theme and issues around service and safety gaps for children — is the report that I released on November 6, called When Talk Trumped Service: A Decade of Lost Opportunity for Aboriginal Children and Youth in B.C.

This report reviews MCFD's spending on aboriginal child welfare over the past 11 years. Specifically, it provides a detailed analysis of the major change initiatives pursued by the B.C. government and the effect those initiatives have had on direct service to aboriginal children and their families. And around that, I want to just emphasize that there's a strong focus, in this report, on service and discussion around aboriginal child welfare and what I would call the service footprint.

MCFD is responsible for six service lines. If we just keep that in your mind as we have this discussion, I think it will be valuable. What are those six service lines? There is what we sometimes call early childhood education and child care, which also tends to include supported infant development.

There is the child welfare stream of child safety, which includes the foster care system and children under various supervision orders, children in care. There is the youth justice system, for young people that are 12 and over and are involved in some antisocial or criminal behaviour.

There is the system of support for children and youth with special needs, which is a birth-to-19-year-old system inside the MCFD envelope of service responsibilities. That includes things like provincial assessment, needs, care planning.

Sometimes children with special needs will become the subject of a voluntary care order, so they then flip over to the child welfare system. The parents will place them in care because they can't meet their needs. A lot of these programs do overlap.

The other area is the child and youth mental health area, which we've been talking about quite a bit around the Still Waiting report. That's an MCFD service line to provide child and youth mental health support and services throughout British Columbia.

Finally, the sixth area is the adoption program. Adoption is a separate service line of MCFD. Sometimes you don't hear a lot about it, but it is a separate service line. There is an Adoption Act. There's a director of adoption. Although planning for children in care and adoption sound like the same thing, they're distinctive and very different programs.

Those are the six service footprints, if you like, of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. After the Gove inquiry in the '90s, the Ministry of Children and Families became a more integrated, larger ministry. It is one of the biggest — in terms of these six areas — ministries in Canada to provide a range of services to children and families.

The precursor to this report is, obviously, remembering that this is a ministry with a significant service responsibility spanning six areas, and within those areas there are many subdiscussions and avenues that we can talk about that are extremely important and valuable for children and families throughout British Columbia.

This report looked at how aboriginal child welfare was delivered and designed and what achievements could be said to have been accomplished by the Ministry of Children and Family Development and, in turn, the B.C. government. Some of them were governmentwide initiatives that impacted or touched on MCFD. Sometimes MCFD's initiatives then touched on other areas.

Three main things are looked at in this report. First of all, MCFD had a core review process as part of the governmentwide core review process beginning in 2001-2002. That tripped off a very significant discussion about how services generally could be rethought throughout
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government and possibly sent outside of government to be delivered somewhere else — ideally, closer to community.

A corollary to that was the discussion of regional aboriginal authorities from 2001-2002. That process didn't come to a completion until 2008-2009. The regionalization process — the idea that there would be ten, 12, 13, five, four or one authority created that would provide the service conduit for aboriginal children and families — was an active area of discussion from 2001 to 2009, active in the sense that it was a process that continued to be funded with a range of concepts and policies that were driving it and accountabilities that drove it. This report looks at this in some detail — what happened in this period.

Then in 2008-2009 the ministry, because that process ended without success, began, almost immediately or simultaneously, another process called a nation-to-nation pilot process or Indigenous Approaches from 2009 to the present. The report looks at the high-level aboriginal child welfare policy issues over this decade.

Again, it was not an easy report to produce. I am extremely grateful and thankful for my determined staff members who have worked together on this — in addition, some external expertise that we had to bring to bear, in particular. When I started to look at aboriginal child welfare — I would say in 2007, when the representative's office got started — it was very difficult to understand what the policy foundation was for the government's approach. Of course, we made the proper inquiries as to: "What is the policy that guides this, and how can we understand it?"

We did have a few years where we were in some fairly serious disagreement about whether or not the representative's office would get access to their policy material, whether cabinet material was to be considered or not to be considered and so on. We got through all of that, but not without a few issues.

Finally, beginning in about 2009-2010, we were able to obtain from the ministry…. This is a lesson in "be careful what you ask for, because you may get it". We got, at least in one shipment — I remember this being in June of that year, because it was looming over my opportunity to take a break with my family — 46 boxes of files containing 76,000 pages of information.

I can only describe that as being akin to that sort of proverbial incompetent business person that brings to their accountant all of their receipts in a shoe box and says: "I have no idea how much I made or I spent, but could you please figure it out for me?"

Maybe all of you around the table are nodding a little bit too knowingly as I described that, but in any event, the experience in our office was really one of the ministry saying: "We've pulled what we can find. We are sending it to you, and good luck. We don't know why you want to look at it. Good luck."

Our view was: we really don't know why we want to look at it either, but I think we need to look at it because, in part, one of the issues that was put to us…. In fact, it was put to us by a member of the standing committee at the time, who is now a minister — I won't name the person — who was very direct in saying: "You know, we're into this process of regional authorities. What happened with that? How did that work for us? What exactly happened there? Can someone explain what that was all about?"

That was actually a pretty good question, which I thought: "Well, I'll answer that question maybe at the next standing committee meeting." Then the next thing you know there are 76,000 documents at our office.

We had to hire some external consultants. We had to actually hire a librarian-archivist, because nothing was CLIFF'd. The government system has a CLIFF'ing process. Like many of you will remember Cheers. Well, Cliff from Cheers is what the government of B.C. uses as its system to document and organize its files.

The boxes of material came. It was not CLIFF'd or organized. We had to spend some time just to organize it. I had to also retain some other expertise around understanding what's a cabinet-level document, what's something that was found in a cabinet somewhere in the Terrace office, and what's whatever else.

That was a monumental task which I hope not to repeat too frequently in my career, but in any event, I'm grateful for the staff for sticking with us and getting through this and plowing through it while we were doing our multiple other issues.

That was what began on the regional aboriginal authorities. I would say we got another 20,000 pages of information as a result, subsequent, on the other areas. So this has been a colossal project to, first of all, weed through it and understand: what was the operating concept? What were the financial regulations, if you like? What was the policy direction that was being sought? What was the leadership in the executive side of government, in the administrative side of government? Who led this? What was this all about?

Getting the materials, getting them organized and so on took some time. My apologies for the fact that the report took a bit of time. It was released and has done a few things.

One is I spoke about the previous report, and I made reference in the previous report…. You will see a fairly seamless theme here. The previous report referred to the 2009 audit that the federal Auditor and the B.C. Auditor did, a joint audit, particularly around aboriginal service. At that time, when they did the audit, they said very strongly that the Ministry of Children and Families needs to speak about the costs, the challenges and what is accomplished for its policy and programs in the area of aboriginal child welfare.
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It was quite a pointed report. The response to the report at the time…. The ministry was in the throes of its transformation exercise at the time, which has now been halted and abandoned. It was kind of an undercurrent to what we'll talk about today. The ministry's letter in that audit report said: "Everything is well in hand and will soon be resolved. Thank you very much to the auditors. Please go away."

They never published the issues on the costs or the policy framework. In the context of reviewing this material, we made a decision in our office to do a couple of things. One, inspired by what the Auditor would try to do, we decided in this report to actually publish information to the public about what is spent to deliver aboriginal child welfare in British Columbia.

Now, I make a note of that because that has never before been made public, including by those who are the 23 delegated aboriginal agencies — don't know how much the other budgets are, how many files they have, what they're expected to do and so on.

I just say this to you because this is the first time many people will have ever seen this information, despite the fact that the Auditor in 2009 said: "Please be very open about the costs." In point of fact, the 23 agencies are funded to the tune of $90 million per annum from the province and about $57 million from the feds.

That's one service area. That's an ongoing budget issue. That's an issue that we talked about: the Out of Sight case that we just discussed, about the child being transferred. That's one area that continues.

Layered on top of that was a bigger strategy to find a new way to deliver aboriginal child welfare through engaging in certain governance and blue-sky discussions over this decade.

Now, that is the subject of most of this report: what drove that; what happened with that; how much did we spend on that; and what did we get for that, if you like, in terms of service to children and youth?

My strong lens here — you can certainly suggest to me it's not the correct lens; I'm open to that — is that we always need to look at the Ministry of Children and Families as a service-oriented ministry. It's about serving a population — sometimes broad-based, sometimes vulnerable — between the ages of birth to 19 that have a variety of needs.

Again, to remind everyone here, in some areas — let's say child and youth mental health — there are some 20,000 requests for service and 200 FTEs out there trying to provide some child and youth mental health service. So there are pressures to serve children and families inside the MCFD budget.

As well, there was this project continued in various forms over a decade of changing the whole way the business will be done for aboriginal children and families.

The chart that appears on page 24 of the report is a very simplistic idea of how things move forward here. First of all…. I don't want to go into a big history lesson, but in 1951 the Indian Act federally was amended. There was a provision, section 88 of the Indian Act, that while it's a federal legislation, on reserve, including the 200 or so reserves in British Columbia…. The child welfare legislation suddenly came onto the reserve and applied.

It's considered a law of general application that applies on reserve, which brought child welfare on reserve. It caused a lot of consternation and dispute, because there were a lot of issues around children and services and so on.

Before the Indian Act amendments in 1951, we are all well familiar with the failed and horrible impacts of the residential school policies and other federal policies that are also kicked off and motivated by that same Indian Act — allowing families to face criminal prosecution if they didn't send their children to denominational residential schools and so on. We know there were horrible impacts via that federal system on children and families.

In 1951 the provincial child welfare legislation applies on reserve. We begin a new policy or program of children being served through a provincial role.

This chart also takes us through a bunch of high-level agreements. Certainly the Nisga'a treaty in 1998 and the B.C. treaty referendum — deciding whether or not there'd be terms of engagement on a treaty process — were very important. There was a lot of dispute at the political level between political leaders of the provincial government, provincial parties and chiefs and others. There was a lot of high-level discussion.

In the context of a lot of that high-level discussion, there were some political-level agreements, such as an agreement in 2005 for a transformative change accord with the B.C., federal government and First Nations leadership to change how services are delivered, as well as Tsawwassen accord, which was in 2002, looking at how we could have better services for children and how we could have a new governance regime for children.

So there were high-level political agreements — not necessarily MCFD at the table — saying: we're going to do something very differently; now take it forward. Part of the research and evaluation in this report is looking at the high-level commitments, what was happening in the ministry, how it was carried forward and what did we in fact learn or get through that process.

Some of the findings, again, might be a little bit shocking. I think they were, in fact, a little bit shocking to some. That is that between 2002 and today…. Well, I would say 2012, because I'm not calculating the continued expenditure on these issues which is in the current fiscal year. Between then and today we've spent about $66 million on aboriginal child welfare change initiatives without service delivery changing, without a child receiving one of those six mandated services or a new model of service being delivered on the ground.
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Again, that doesn't include the annual expenditures of about $160 million for the delegated aboriginal agencies or services in the other six program lines affecting aboriginal children.

What was the money spent on? What was the discussion? Well, first of all, the discussion was, for the first decade, the first $32 million, around the aboriginal authorities — whether there'd be one, two, five, ten or 12 — and how you would slice it up, have planning committees meeting and thinking about this process.

Out of that process on the aboriginal side, no authority was created. Legislation was drafted but never introduced in the Legislative Assembly. Very limited policy regulation work was done inside the six service lines of the ministry. But there was a lot of meeting — talking, meeting, talking and meeting. Was there valuable talking and meeting happening inside those rooms? There might have been. I'm sure there were valuable discussions being held. It's just that nothing amounted to an actual service to a child. It was talking about service, not serving.

What it did during that period of time is it captivated the leadership of MCFD — ministers, senior staff — into a kind of rolling process that would promise some great single kind of resolution moment of the issue that would happen in a month or two months or six months. Another announcement would be made, and another meeting would be held and so on.

Like these things often can, it took on a life of its own. I'm not saying it's an industry. But it sort of took on a process of its own where it was very evident that while there were some opportunities for a course correction during that process…. For instance, there was an external consultant. Sage Consultants reported to the government early in that process that it really wasn't going anywhere and that it had to get it back on focus and set some clear priorities around what could happen or couldn't happen. Things just went and continued without redirection.

Again, accountability and responsibility. It's hard to understand. But the idea that these authorities would be Crown agencies…. One Crown agency was created, not in this area but in another area, which was Community Living B.C. That's the only agency that was created in the children's service area out of this whole process coming out of core review.

We all know with CLBC…. We work very closely with them. In fact, since I've been representative, they've served children, and they've not served children. We've moved the service responsibilities around. We're still really working through many of those issues. I'm happy with the place we're in today, certainly, with CLBC. We're working closely with them, and I see some real effectiveness. But it has been a bumpy ride around how they work with others and so on. The idea of the Crown agency out there providing the service has not been seamless by any means. We're still working it out. It was the only one that was created.

These other four, five, ten, one, two, never happened. Approximately $35 million was spent discussing and planning, paying people to meet, hiring consultants to facilitate meetings, producing materials. In point of fact, when you look at the 76,000 individual documents, most of it is of quite questionable value today. It's not like it has a model of service responsibility or there's a detailed assessment of the needs of aboriginal children and youth.

It wasn't an outcomes-driven process that described a range of needs around those six service lines I've talked about before. It was a very high-level discussion. No devolution happened. A massive expenditure, really, when you look at it over a seven-year period, and no change in the system.

There was a plan to table the legislation. It was suspended at the last minute. Having worked with the minister of the day, when the legislation was to be tabled but wasn't tabled, I certainly had a chance to discuss with him after, you know: "What are your views about why this did or didn't go forward?" It was sort of like: "It's too painful to talk about. I don't want to talk about it." It maybe is a curse of being the political minister of the day. It's just too hard to look at.

But I think that is sort of the role of an office like ours, as an oversight office. You have to put aside the emotion and the venting or whatever and actually look, in the hard light of day, at what was achieved and what was accomplished. What we found, in fact, was that very little was accomplished.

However, there was a lot of pressure at two levels. One was a strong sense that the aboriginal leadership — with these high-level political discussions with senior government, the Premier and others — wanted to do something transformative and different and that these delegated aboriginal agencies that have been around now for more than 20 years were not it. They wanted to have something else.

When that was on the verge of dying, there then was launched another initiative, which was a nation-to-nation initiative — that B.C. would enter into a nation-to-nation discussion with individual nations and would allow them funding to chart their own child welfare policy.

Well, again, there's no question that there is an inherent right of self-government, that First Nations can exercise governmental powers over child welfare if they wish. But they have to have a constitution. They have to have a body that passes the law. They have to be in a process and so on. This was all launched out of MCFD, not launched out of the Ministry of Attorney General or the B.C. Treaty Commission process. It was somehow inside MCFD. They would start it. It would be between, you know, one to two to 100 of these.

There has been another approximately $30 million
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spent on these projects over the last while. They are where a particular group, sometimes a First Nation…. Sometimes it isn't a First Nation at all, but it's a service delivery organization.

As a matter of fact, there is no policy for this. This was just something that was launched, essentially, off the desk of a senior bureaucrat, saying: "Well, we're going to now…. That's stopped, but many of you still want to keep going, so we're going to keep going in this form, or we are going to let you come and bring your proposals to us, and we'll figure out…. We'll give you some money to keep talking about something."

I'm not suggesting in any way that there isn't a valuable partnership, that there aren't interesting and important topics. It's just the Ministry of Children and Family Development and these nation-to-nation indigenous approaches have no policy foundation for the work that they're doing. They don't know what it means, for instance, for someone to say that they're going to take over, to exercise governmental powers.

A very basic thing that you will be well familiar with, because we just talked about it with the transfer of the child: who's going to be the guardianship social worker in the new world order that we're talking about? "Well, we haven't figured that out yet. We're just talking." I'm not saying that it can't be worked out and talked about, but the child needs to know who will be serving them, how they will be serving them and how their policy and practice will be governed. Very basic things.

People like to take their children — whether they're their children, grandchildren or children that they have guardianship of — pass over a border and go down to, for instance, Seattle, our neighbouring city. Well, you need to have a passport. You need to have a guardian to do that. So who's actually responsible for children?

Some very basic issues, which MCFD is well familiar with, in the six program areas never were spelled out in the policy dimension of this work. It was really just: give money to communities to get them talking. Good discussions, important discussions, but not collaborative discussions.

Give money for people to go away and talk about what they may want to do. At some point maybe they'll come back with something. MCFD had no expectation that they'd come back. They just had the expectation that they'd give money and let someone else keep talking, because the other talking exercise ended, so here's the next talking exercise — hence the title of the report, which is, I know, somewhat controversial in terms of naming the issue. But I think it is important that we have to be straight, which is that we paid for a lot of talking with no one receiving a service.

Now, latterly in some of these nation-to-nation projects have there been people consulting with our young people? Maybe they've had a cultural camp and said: "We're going to talk about our new model of what we want to do. We're going to have a cultural camp. We're going to bring five or six kids to the cultural camp to talk about that." They've engaged with young people in some instances, particularly more recently, but that isn't in the six service lines of the ministry. It isn't opening a service, providing a child and youth mental health service or a special needs service or cultural support to a child in care.

They've done work. I'm hoping a lot of good work has been done in the community, but MCFD has no policy foundation, and they really have no idea where this is headed or going and how it connects to their core responsibility around their six service lines.

Furthermore, funding and supporting this work takes their attention away from the six service lines and perhaps the fact that they have no aboriginal recruitment human resources plan, they have no aboriginal service framework for their six service lines, and they actually don't report on how they're collaborating to effectively deliver those six service lines to aboriginal children and families who, in point of fact, are among the most vulnerable families and require those services.

So it has provided a distraction. Yet also, as the report suggests — it's not that I'm sort of playing Dr. Freud here — it has created the illusion that somehow, somewhere, something really wonderful is going to happen that is outside the Ministry of Children and Families, and nobody has to really be involved in it; it'll just happen.

This is a very problematic concern, because while there are good discussions happening, when we look at what is being done, even at those discussions — and we have looked at them — in every area that we've looked at, there will need to be some collaborative discussion of how that will actually work. Nothing is really a substitute for, as we've talked about, well-trained, competent, effective services. It doesn't matter who they're delivered by. They should be delivered by aboriginal service providers, as well, with a clear framework. But you have to actually have a process to talk about that, put it in place and have some accountabilities.

So I agree very strongly, and we've said in the report strongly, whether a child is a status Indian or non-status Indian, whether they live on reserve or live off reserve, they should have the same standards around their best interests. They should have good services, they should have good accountability, and we should have good outcomes.

From my role as representative, it has been very challenging, because it's been very hard to understand why we have such poor outcomes for aboriginal children, yet we have invested in this massive project for a long period of time.

For instance, I would say…. Like, in my critical injury and death side, we'll report on a suicide of an aboriginal girl in the new year. When I look at all of the reportables that I've taken in my office and reviewed and said, "This is going to be looked at in some way, either in a group
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report or an individual report," more than 52 percent of all of those reportables that have come in are aboriginal children.

Of all the injuries reported, there are 1,950 that are aboriginal children's injuries that have been accepted, evaluated and will be reported on or have been reported on. Of all of the deaths, there are 1,058 that are aboriginal. Fifty-two percent of all of them are aboriginal children.

In every instance, we've accepted and reviewed those and taken them in to look at closer because there are serious unmet service needs. It's a child that has not received a child and youth mental health service despite having obvious and apparent need. It’s a child that has a special need that hasn't been assessed or supported for whom there is a completely unclear policy framework in British Columbia. A child with special needs on reserve or off reserve is assessed by whom and provided service by whom, for instance.

Or the adoption stream — you'll hear a lot about that in the new year when we report on it. Complete confusion around the adoptions policy. Why are there disproportionately more First Nations children, but they're not being adopted? We have a provision in the Adoption Act for customary adoption, allowing tribal adoption practices, but it's never been activated or used, despite the fact that we've had tables of discussion of other things for many, many years.

Early childhood education and infant development. Again, we did a report on unsafe sleeping deaths. A disproportionate number of those children that died around unsafe sleeping under two, infants, were aboriginal children, most of whom were dying in circumstances that might suggest a genetic issue or whatever. But it was an unsafe sleep environment related to deep poverty — sleeping in the motel, sleeping in the car seat, sleeping on a bed, bed sharing and so on.

In all of the work of our office, we've consistently seen significant unmet service needs of aboriginal children. So one of the drivers of the report, as we went through all of that material and all of the information that the Ministry of Children and Families at the senior level and at the local level was doing, was really to look at: were they thinking about the impact on service, in this practical way, about outcomes for kids — how are kids doing and so on?

I think what was more surprising to us was that they were not doing that. There was really no correlation between this process and what I would call unmet service issues. In fact, when we come back to the issues we talked about earlier, which is…. Let's say all of that process, $66 million, is done. For the 23 delegated aboriginal agencies in British Columbia that receive resources, what do they do and how do they do it?

Well, if you look at page 30 and 31 of the report, we sort of listed them. I'm very supportive of the work that the delegated agencies do. Let me say that. I've worked with them non-stop from day one.

In fact, one of the directors was just here, and he left — Bill Yoachim from Kw'umut Lelum agency on Vancouver Island, an agency which I recognize in the report as having done extraordinary work. Because when we did the plan-of-care audit and found only 5 percent compliance with plans of care, he and his agency went to work non-stop to bring the plans of care up to 97 percent compliance.

They filed all of the information and worked very closely with us to show us how they'd done that. It wasn't just paperwork; it was really being involved with kids. That was wonderful. Point of fact though. If you look on page 30, at the bottom of the page, you'll see that they're one of the lowest-funded delegated agencies in British Columbia.

Now, unfortunately, Mr. Yoachim, who was here, had never seen this information before. It has not been an easy process for me as representative to constantly say to the government: "Are you going to be upfront with your delegated agencies about how they will be funded and what they will be funded for? Will they be expected to carry a file load? What will they have to do with those files, depending on their level of service? What will they be required to report on? How will they be supported?"

It has been very difficult, I think. So now this information is out. As you can imagine, for those 23 agencies, there are some issues about this. Some report back to the representative's office saying: "You should never have published that information about how much money we get and how many files we have."

I feel very strongly that the legislative committee that I report to, the Select Standing Committee on Children on Youth, would require us to bring the information into the public. It has to hit the public. You have to change the concept of service responsibility back to being…. It can't just be about: "We're going to promise something to happen over here in some abstract table where people are sent away to think about things on their own." We have actual services that have to be delivered.

The delegated aboriginal agencies, as people around this table well know, really only work in that one service area, which is child welfare. They have a lot of perverse performance measures that they have to work with — multiple issues that have been the same issues on their table for a decade.

If you look at the 25 issues that they've had for a decade, they're the same 25 issues for a decade. The forum that they have with MCFD is kind of air clearing — like, they vent. I don't blame them for venting, but when are we going to actually resolve the issues that they have, which are: have leadership, have some accountability, have some framework and to move forward?

After this report comes out, as you can see, there is no policy that guides this work. There is no policy for aboriginal children services in British Columbia. It is a
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hodgepodge of agreements, financial…. I'm not saying people are mishandling the money, but when you don't have an outcome for the child and a focus on accountability, how will we know that the accountability in the service is there? That's the big problem. There clearly is a gap between what's funded, what's supported and what children and youth receive in British Columbia.

Some of the agencies, like in table 1 — again, this was a very significant subject of public interest, particularly in the reporting on the report — are agencies that have been funded year over year over year and haven't had a file. Now, that doesn’t mean that they cannot do some other work; they just will never have a child welfare file. They can't be delegated. There are no staff that can do delegated work. It's not feasible that they probably will, and yet they've received money year over year over year.

Now, did they do something else with their money that didn’t relate to that? Well, possibly they did, but there's no requirement to report on it. I hope they did. I'm not saying they did anything wrong. The government gave them the money, as did the federal government. But the challenge I have is that in some of those very same communities, we have unmet needs on child and youth mental health, unmet needs on special needs.

We have serious safety issues. We don't have proper residential services. We don't have a proper, functioning adoptions program. We don't have a proper, functioning early childhood education infant development program. So the disconnect between…. This is not the talking table; this is supposed to be the service line — the service line receiving resources to do what, exactly?

I have over the last number of years been quite strong with the ministry, saying: "What is it that you're getting out of this? Why are we getting all of these phone calls for service? Why can't we get them served?" So that's a challenge.

In some instances, maybe they will move forward to have delegation. Maybe they should become a community agency that provides services in those six areas. Maybe they have strength. They can be qualified and accredited and do that work. I'm not saying that they shouldn't; it's just that there's no decision-making. The only decision-making is: "Here's some money. Go away and do something. We’ll come to a forum periodically, and we're going to vent."

Now, the other issue we talked about earlier, which is: for the 23 agencies…. Just looking at it, you can see that it's all over the map. For the 23 agencies representing about 40 to 50 percent of the First Nations in B.C. — because quite a few of them are not covered by any agency, so the ministry does the work…. For many of them, I have worked with them extensively.

I've produced a number of reports. You see the list. I've asked them to report on the very same things I've asked the ministry to report on: progress at school of kids in care, moves in care, number of face-to-face visits with social workers, permanency planning. What's the plan? Are we going to move toward adoption? Are we going to have a return to a family member, a kinship placement?

Regular reporting. I'd like to see them reporting regularly, as would anyone else. I've received a fair amount of pushback, saying: "We haven't got the resources to do it. We're not really required to do it." I haven't had a lot of support from MCFD in that environment to come forward, for MCFD to say: "No, we're all going to be reporting better on how children are doing. We're all going to have a stronger outcomes focus."

It's been hard for me to do the work with the delegated aboriginal agencies because the ministry is a partner that (a) isn't necessarily modelling good practice and (b) isn't requiring it.

The ministry is responsible for quality assurance for the delegated agencies. These agencies are created in this way: there's a federal policy requiring a minimum number of 1,000 children, and you can have an agency created. Every single one except one is an exception to the policy of having 1,000. Only one meets the 1,000 children. Everything in this area is an exception. Just know that from the beginning.

The member bands — three of these are urban, and 20 of these are reserve-based. The ones that are urban are completely funded by MCFD. There is no band resolution or whatever. I mean, Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services — a very important agency serving one of the largest numbers of children, with the largest budget — has a huge responsibility, but there aren't resolutions of every band council in British Columbia that the kids that live in Vancouver should be served there and have some interband whatever. That doesn't exist. It's just work that they're doing that's important work.

The quality assurance piece. The bands would pass a resolution saying: "We're going to create an agency." The ministry says: "Okay, we'll create an agency." Aboriginal Affairs Canada says: "Fine." They begin a process. They then begin taking down some delegated responsibilities, usually around family support, finding resources — leading up to fully delegated child welfare investigation of work.

For one agency, Cowichan Tribes, they actually have an adoption component. They're the only one. It's quite unique. About eight kids have been adopted. Really remarkably strong and impressive work that has been done by that agency.

All I can say to you is: there is a detailed story behind every one of these entries about how the representative would view the quality of work that's done. But I don't think it's up to representative to be doing the quality assurance. The ministry has to do quality assurance, and the agencies have to want quality assurance.

One of the things that has happened because of these other processes is that everyone feels like they're doing
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their own thing. No one really feels like they're accountable in a collaborative, integrated system with the best interests of children at the forefront. Hence, we have different levels of service response, remarkably different levels of funding. I cannot answer you if you have a question for me about what you see on pages 30 and 31. I can tell you right now I have no answer for it. And there is no answer for it in the file. Some areas may have a higher level of responsibility, but there's no clear answer.

One of the issues in the recommendations, even on the delegated agencies…. Since I've become representative, I've repeatedly had a request from delegated agencies — not all but most of them — that I get an exception so that their staff doesn't have to meet pre-employment qualifications so they don't have to have a social work degree, so they can have a broader ability to hire. I've been pretty consistent from day one, saying: "I will not support that position. I will not advocate that position." We need quality, trained staff. Technically, right now the rule is that 25 percent can be an exception. In some instances it's bigger.

In some instances these agencies don't have a file because they don't have a person there. It's not that someone's not there saying, "We need family service support," and they're like: "I'm sorry. You're going to have to go to a community 300 miles away to get someone from MCFD to serve you." You've been funded to have those people for years, but you don't have them.

That comes back to the discussion we had earlier, which is: where is recruitment? Where is retention? Where's the support? Are we not finding people, training them, educating them, getting out there? I mean, these are not new agencies. Some of them are 20-plus years old. It shows, I think, that in the past decade, the interest has been somewhere else and not in this service area.

Around the good work that they do — I know they do a lot of very, very good work — they can't also report on it, which is unfortunate. I think that's most unfortunate. Quality assurance has to be a single quality…. We have a Métis quality assurance framework where the Indigenous Approaches money funded someone to develop something — not the ministry to develop it but someone else to develop it. Someone else has their own idea of what their quality assurance will be. I mean, quality assurance is really basic business: what are the outcomes you get for kids in the key service areas that you deliver services in?

The other chart I will draw your attention to — one on pages 36 and 37. Because you can't fully understand it without looking at it over a few years…. I don't put on their file accounts, because it's not possible to do the file accounts. In some instances there's something called dummy files. They open a file. They know they have no one to serve, but they count it as a file even though it's going to be sent over to MCFD to serve because they haven't got anybody to do the service. But it's still there. So I can't get an accurate file count. I'm not saying they don't have real files, but there's no file counting process that can be relied on.

I just looked at the financials over a period of time. The bottom line for me in doing this was, basically, to say: "Look, we have to be able to buy some level of service with this investment. A $90 million provincial investment and a $60 million federal investment — that has to buy some level of service. Can someone please define the level of service we will have, who's accountable for it and how it will work? And is it working?"

If they feel they can't provide the service — this is just the child welfare–related service — maybe they should be doing some other service. Maybe child and youth mental health, maybe children and youth with special needs. I don't know. I know there are unmet needs. Is there some way to get the good people who are working together, wanting to do something, to do something else that will be important and effective? Again, it's been very difficult because the discussion in the broader forum, particularly in the political forum, is: "We're going to do everything on our own. Leave us alone." Well, it's very problematic.

I'll take you over to page 48. You will note that we go from the tens of thousands into the millions on page 48. The denominator changes. Unfortunately, I couldn't put it all in the same denominator because there would be too many zeros. We look at the expenditures on the regional aboriginal authorities, broken down by region.

Again, I excluded significant areas of expenditure in doing this report, not because it's all about money. I didn't include in this, for instance, all the planning on early childhood — Success by 6 or other initiatives where people got money to plan early childhood activities. I didn't put down the friendship centres as a service line, if you like, because they do provide service, but they do other things as well. Which side they land on isn't clear, although I think fundamentally they are a front-end service organization that is trying to support families, particularly in an urban context.

Here is the funding that went into the regional aboriginal authorities. It included right through…. I mean, the legislation was pulled in 2008, but they kept funding it right into 2009 and then sometimes vouchered over the money to the new process and said: "Well, we didn't use it there. We'll voucher it over to the new process."

And so, again, if you look at the new process, the aboriginal initiatives or nation-to-nation processes, which appears on page 51, you'll see some notes just around some of the political entities. They didn't receive any funding because they took sort of a voucher from some other funding.

On these Indigenous Approaches projects, these 18, again, first of all, some of them are a delegated agency that's receiving Indigenous Approaches resources. It could be that they're the holding because they are the only entity that can hold the money for something else, but nevertheless that's not clear — the why. But I am con-
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cerned about when a delegated agency then receives a whole lot of money to do something else. Are they clear about what their job is and who they work for and so on? Or are they becoming something different? It's, again, what people's expectations are on the ground versus what the expectations are in the contracting process.

Inside this page of work…. This only goes to 2012-2013. It doesn't include current or future years. I don't want to leave the impression that there isn't some valuable discussion. There are people committed about their children that want to see things done. The impression I want you to have is that it's money being sent way over here for people to talk about something, when the reality of six service lines in a ministry that's about service is here. And the ministry can't run this. They don't understand what they're doing. And then this continues to create all kinds of tensions and issues.

I think there are some very capable people talking about very important issues who receive resources. They're not people taking public money. But they're not having to work on six service lines. They're not opening files and saying, "Well, we did service for six people in the child and youth mental health system," or "We are doing cultural support for children in care." It's just something over there, and what they are is a whole range of…. Some of them have no executive director and haven't had one for a long time.

The reporting that's required back is, I would say, nominal. There's no framework whatsoever. And when you have poor reporting and a ministry that has a lot of challenges with getting down to some of its other business, as you can see, you have a bit of a recipe for confusion and the need to have a pretty fundamental course correction.

The findings in this report are pretty straightforward. Finding No. 1 on page 53: "There is no articulated, overarching and comprehensive strategy for delivering aboriginal child welfare services to have responsive, effective, accessible, equitable and culturally appropriate services to meet the needs of children and their families." And this is critical: "Nor has there been effective collaboration and coordination." So there hasn't been the coordination with community leaders or with other ministries.

By collaboration and coordination I mean, well, okay, you want to run a child welfare system. Great. Well, how are we actually going to make sure that when the child gets to Vancouver, we all work together? Or the child needs to go to the provincial assessment centre and they get that assessment. Or they're in the youth justice system in Burnaby. How would we work on that? So that's the piece that hasn't been done.

I would actually go one step further and say that on page 54…. The funding is complex and uneven, and it really is a mess, in part because they had this other process and nobody really looked at it.

The federal government has, in five other jurisdictions, prevention enhancement money that they give for aboriginal child welfare agencies. They've never drawn it down in British Columbia. It's been sitting there year in and year out because nobody can decide how they're going to spend it. So it's been sitting there — prevention enhancement money that in other provinces went to improve the work of delegated agencies — because they really are only funded for the children in care, not to do the prevention work that's so important.

The question of what is the prevention work is important — what the service is, who delivers it and so on. B.C. has never been able to draw it down because even at this point, we can't decide who is going to get it and who speaks about it. We don't really have that collaboration. I can only say that in my discussions with Aboriginal Affairs Canada, they welcomed this report. They were very supportive. I don't report on their….

They couldn't tell me what their $57 million — who it goes to. There's no page that says, "Here's the federal government's $57 million and here's how it's broken down," because they don't know. Well, they might, but they won't share it. It's their issue. They certainly wouldn't let me share it, although I have a strong interest in who gets what.

Is it a case of a system run where you have a good relationship with a senior bureaucrat, you get money, and therefore those children may get a service, or you don't? Is it a policy foundation? Should there be a board that arm's-length funds these processes so you avoid that type of system? I don't know. I didn't make that recommendation, but it certainly speaks to that.

On page 55, the finding that goals and objectives intended to impact on delivery of services were never defined. Nobody ever defined, in these talking processes, what it is that we actually are going to do, point of fact. We're just going to keep talking. As you can imagine, you don't always keep the children and youth at the focus. Maybe people are talking about something else altogether, and there is no one bringing it back to an agenda around consistent outcomes and so on.

Recommendations. As you know, I always say that I like few recommendations with limited detail. Okay, never say never; never say always. You can upbraid me for the error in this one. In part, recommendation 1 required a lengthy rationale because I could not get anyone to understand why this recommendation was needed, including in MCFD and outside MCFD.

People were like: "They should just keep funding these community-based discussions where we will exercise government powers and have a whole new regime." I was like: "Well, you're entitled to have that, but it can't be in MCFD." One of the reasons why I said….

First of all, they're not necessarily nations, right? MCFD doesn't decide who are nations and who exercises governmental power and has the constitutional
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authority and so on. So we said: "Send it over to the Attorney General to straighten out." Who do you represent? Are you representing a nation? Can you talk about what should be negotiated, should then exercise governmental powers over children? What are the triggering steps? How is it going to be valid? You can do it. There's no question. But we've got to set it out, identifying the parties, making sure, of course….

A key point here that I had was that the human rights of children are upheld and that children do have rights. They are not just baggage to be passed around and talked about as though later on we'll actually get down to the children that have the needs. They have a right.

The question earlier was about: where does the child live? The child has been in one foster home for ten years. It may be a non-aboriginal foster home. Who says that's the right thing to do to move them from a non-aboriginal foster home? They have a right to be heard. We listen to them, and we actually say: "No. They are very settled and adjusted for ten years here. They shouldn't be moved. That's that child's right."

The policy should be that they're connected, and it has to be practical and do it appropriately and early. But after ten years, you don't fix the mistake from ten years before, ten years later, without trampling on the rights of children to have a strong, stable attachment to their caregivers. The human rights of children have to be considered.

A big issue here is the scale and scope. Can you have a child welfare agency in a community with 50 kids? Very challenging. I mean, the federal government says: "No delegated agency without 1,000." I don't know. You have to have an economy of scale, right? I have four kids. I'm not asking for a child welfare agency. Note that I have more children in the file numbers than some other agencies, but in any event, I don't want to have an agency. It's hard enough to run a family.

Furthermore, what are the steps along this process and the technical requirements so that you know: "By the way, today we're out of section 88 of the Indian Act. We are now in our tribal regime. We're out. We've exited." Everybody needs to know the day, the time you exit that one system and into another one, because the kids' determination of their child welfare interests, their special needs interests, their mental health interests, their adoption interests is affected by that.

It can happen, but it has to know. As I indicated in this report, we have four treaties in British Columbia where you have the opportunity to exercise self-government authority over child welfare, and none of those treaty parties have drawn that down.

They can speak for themselves, but in talking to them and asking, you know, "Why have the Nisga'a not exercised their self-government power?" there's a combination of factors. It's complex. It's expensive. No one knows who's going to pay for it. Sometimes the costs are unknown.

We have a case that we're dealing with now, an advocacy case for a child from that community, where we are all working together to find services and supports for one child. There's an enormous cost, and they wouldn't want to have full responsibility for that. I think the concept of it sounded really good. The practicality, though, is more complicated, and it comes back to children and collaboration and having a different discussion. That's recommendation 1.

Recommendation No. 2: MCFD stop open-ended actions, initiatives — which isn't to say that they shouldn't be funded somewhere else or supported elsewhere or recaptured. In fact, what I've recommended to MCFD, without any success, for two years is that they take that list of 18 on page 51 and actually talk to people and say: "Can some of this work be re-profiled into service delivery?" Because when I'm talking to them, a lot of it is service delivery.

They want family group conferencing, child protection mediation. They want a program that can be developed, but nobody from MCFD ever comes and says: "Here's what we can do together." It's just: "Go away." They have to stop that. I said "stop it" in a way to force them to make a decision and focus on what they're doing.

Recommendation 3 is about taking a plan to close those gaps. When you close gaps, you look at unmet needs. You only have a gap because there's a need that's not being met in six service lines.

And recommendation No. 4, which is a crucial, crucial recommendation, is that you have to have leadership. You have to have senior aboriginal people in leadership. Isn't it interesting that after a decade of open-ended discussion processes, they do not have an aboriginal recruitment program? They have no stable, solid, senior aboriginal leadership that they've recruited and retained, maybe because when you have an open-ended discussion process somewhere else, people don't come into the system and get trained and develop a strong public service piece.

They may have actually, through their processes, unwittingly lost a lot of leadership that we should have had in public service. So fix that.

The final one. You've seen this repeatedly. Again, I listed it all, because I know that we talk about these themes: report twice a year progress at school; participation in early childhood — I don't care if it's a child on reserve, off reserve, out of a delegated agency, Ministry of Children and Families, whatever; health status; special needs. Do they have a care plan? How many visits are they getting? What are their moves in care?

Repeatedly I get the "We can't do this. We can't do that. We don't have enough money." I think the feeling around the committee has been very similar, which is: okay, what can you do?
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I did a big list, so when I go to meet with the delegated agencies and the ministry: "Tell me what you can start with. Where are you going to start? Is it going to be No. 1? Because I'm happy with No. 1. Is it 2, 3, 4? What's it going be? Tell me which one it's going to be because reporting on nothing isn't on." There has to be a report, and there should be accountability built into your contracting.

In fact, maybe a wise government would give an incentive for the people that can report. The agency that was the lowest-funded agency, that got 97 percent of the plans of care for kids — maybe they should get an incentive, as opposed to the disincentive of: "We're not actually going to tell you what our envelope is or what it is we're doing."

This report is a controversial report. I appreciate it. It's about refocusing the ministry's work. It's about having hard discussions about the needs of children. But it is also about, you know, if people blink and continue doing what we're doing, we're going to lose an opportunity, and another generation of children will have unmet needs. That's not acceptable.

Decisions have to be taken that are firm and clear decisions around serving kids. Whether or not they will be taken is not up to me. I'm just putting it out there that they have to be made.

I think what we'll do is take a break, because the lunch is out there. I have four people that are on the list to come back and ask their questions after lunch. Let's come back here in a half an hour. We will recess.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We're resuming our discussion on the report When Talk Trumped Service. I just wanted to thank everyone for coming back right on time.

M. Karagianis: I would like to, first of all, just observe that this seems like a very bad repetition of The Music Man — right? — where if you just give them the instruments and leave them alone in a corner, they'll learn how to play. I think that's kind of a sad statement after all these years.

I have a couple of questions here. The years that the ministry was involved in the transformative change, which you have been very astute at asking questions about over the years, as has the opposition…. I would like to know how much of that legacy, of that ethic, has cascaded over into this new nation-to-nation discussion. Is this, in fact, just a new version of the transformative change? It does still seem to me that there is a lot of talk without a lot of substance, apparent in the things you've talked about in this report, most certainly.

I'd also like to know about the issues around training and capacity-building. We do know that in initial discussions with First Nations communities and with delegated agencies, one of the biggest concerns they had was about the lack of capacity within their own organizations. I think your report speaks again to that, about how many of these delegated agencies don't seem to have as much capacity, after ten years and a lot of money, as we would expect them to.

Both those issues, I think, tie together a little bit, and I wouldn't mind your comments on that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, the transformation initiative…. If you look at page 49 of the report, I refer to the fact that in 2009-10 MCFD proceeded with these nation-to-nation initiatives, now called Indigenous Approaches. The goal of the project was "to determine a process of child welfare governance and then move forward to providing that…with the support of MCFD." That's all the minute was in terms of what would happen. The problem is there is no overarching direction, no comprehensive policy, just a bunch of ad hoc contracts. I note that it started out by 17 that year, and the idea was that it would go up to 100.

The deputy minister of the time said that the ministry would be non-prescriptive, meaning whatever came in would be accepted as submitted and go forward as submitted. That was somehow seen as being an appropriate policy, which is: not having any assessment. I think the issue around the transformation era….

I certainly had serious concerns as representative about: what did this mean in terms of all kinds of issues around the six service lines of the ministry? As you know, there were some issues that came to a fairly grinding halt during that period, like adoptions and what have you. But on this area, it was the one where we were really unclear about. What did it mean?

There were policies put out, a Strong, Safe and Supported policy, which still said regional aboriginal authorities. Then there was this initiative, which is: accept anything without criticism and fund it. As a result, well, we have these 18.

I can understand why across, for instance, First Nations in B.C. they might be very frustrated with this report. They've been told: "Whatever you bring forward, we will not say anything about it; we'll just give you money to work on it." The problem is there are people who are really organized and focused on kids and doing work, and then there could be someone else using it for other things. I'm not saying they do, but there's no accountability. You only count to the bottom line of: "Yes, we spent the money, and we enjoyed that."

Has there been a U-turn on that process, if you like? Like today? Well, I think the reason why I did the report is because there hasn't been a U-turn. And that continues.
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The projects are funded for another year. Many of them feel that they'll be funded for year over year over year.

MCFD has sent out…. I refer here to some correspondence. Certainly, the week before the report went out, there was some correspondence. Interesting timing. But in any event, there was some correspondence with the project, saying: "We are really going to have to talk about how what you're doing relates to service delivery." Of course, people are extremely frustrated, saying, "What are you talking about? We're doing this," or what have you. I think that is a continuation of that concern.

The other thing I would say is the current plan that the ministry is operating under — their operational and strategic direction plan, which I'm sure they'll have an opportunity to present — has, basically, a placeholder.

There's no aboriginal policy in it. There's no aboriginal report. It says: "We're going to figure this out." I mean, it's a paragraph that says — I can quote it exactly: "Work with community partners to clarify outcomes and measures of success for aboriginal children, youth and families." That's what it says. But we don't know who their partners are, when they have these other projects, and they have their DAAs.

It's one of those lines where it sounds better, but there's no meat on the bones of that one. Furthermore, they've done two operational performance and strategic management reports. They have not included the aboriginal information. In the first one they say, "Well, we won't have it until the next one," and the second one is: "We don't really have it in this one."

Another reason why I felt very strongly to release at least some of the funding file…. Even though it's very specific and limited, it's some information to allow people to ask, "Well, for the 17 files that you have, what is it that we get in terms of those key outcomes? Are these kids in school? Are they healthy? Are they doing well? Are they expected to return to family? Are they going to be adopted?" — some of those areas.

We are still dealing with…. If it is a U-turn, we are kind of waiting with the turn signal to get there. I'm not sure what it is, but at the same time, there is no policy. The only U-turn will come by a clear and consistent policy framework.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I want to say a huge thank-you, obviously, for all your work and all the reports. But I think this was a very difficult report to get out, a very difficult report, as you've outlined, in just getting the information — to be able to sift through that and to be able to put something on the table that I know has been controversial, that I know has not been well-received everywhere. I think it speaks to the independence of your office, and I think it speaks to your office and your integrity around children in this province.

I think a couple of things have been most frustrating in reading the report. The first one is that everyone, I believe, in the ministry, everyone in aboriginal agencies, most people who work in the child welfare field and most people in British Columbia would all agree that what we're doing right now is not working for aboriginal children — that the system right now is not serving aboriginal children well.

You just need to look at the numbers. You just need to look at the lack of success. You just need to look, as you've pointed out in your reports often, at the failure to thrive, the failure to have the kind of success rates that other children are having.

Given that, given that we all agree that something different needs to happen, I think it's very frustrating to see the kind of lack of direction, lack of focus, lack of intent in these ten years that could have gone to improving things for aboriginal children and could have brought those communities together who wanted to come together.

Certainly, a lot of the First Nations communities I know that came to the table came to the table in good faith, believing it was an opportunity to make a difference and to improve the lives of children in their communities.

That didn't happen, and I think everyone has to be accountable for that. I think it is important that there be accountability, that there be clear measures, that there be a clear direction for resources that are going to children and families. That has to be there for everyone. That has to be there for the ministry. That has to be there for aboriginal agencies. That has to be there for community organizations, aboriginal or non-aboriginal. When you are receiving public dollars, you have to be accountable for how those dollars are spent and where they're spent.

I would agree with your point that probably, for many of these organizations that are receiving money, there were good things done, but there was no reporting. There was no requirement for reporting, and that has to change. That simply has to change. There has to be accountability on everyone's part, which is good for everyone, from my perspective.

Just a quick question around the practice standards. I had a little bit of discussion with the ministry during estimates about this. My understanding is that there have been a set of standards for aboriginal agencies to follow through delegation and that the government has been reviewing, or is in the process of reviewing, those standards for aboriginal agencies and relooking at them.

I just wondered whether you've had any discussion, prior to or since the report has come out, about what progress is being made. I'll ask the question of the ministry as well, but I just wondered, from your office, whether there has been any discussion about those practice standards and the tightening up or the existence of those rules, to make sure that everyone is following a similar
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kind of standard.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. Well, first of all, around the standards, on page 27 we look at the DAA model. It was supposed to be three tiers of delegation: voluntary service delivery; guardianship services — which means, of course, aboriginal children in care, permanency planning and so on, mostly interfacing with children that someone else has removed; and then finally, child protection services. Then for one agency, also, adoption has been added.

In any event, we have a tiering, and we’re supposed to have, basically, a matrix. You get there…. It's like a tick-off: you've got the readiness, you've shown the capacity, you're going to meet the quality assurance, you've got the staff, and so on. It just hasn't worked. It hasn't been enforced.

For a period of time — certainly, I would say, from 2007 to about 2010 — I don't think it was followed, because the message was: "We're just going to do away with you." Again, you know, they got funding and what have you. So around the "What are you doing, for whom, how and under what model?" it hasn't been there. I think it's stronger.

I think the other issue is the quality assurance. Is it a single quality assurance system that everyone shares, or is it a separate one? I certainly think that it's so complex that there's value in having a single system but with strong emphasis throughout on aboriginal children's outcomes — a strong emphasis with aboriginal service and aboriginal children's outcomes.

On page 41 you'll see that I talk about what the standards are that they follow when they do have services. The delegated aboriginal authorities developed their own standards in 1999. It was changed in 2005. They have been in a process, again, since 2009 of redesigning those standards — 2009 to 2013.

I have been very active behind the scenes, saying: "If you're not going forward, why don't you tell the delegated agencies that you're going to have a single set of standards?" or "Will you have two standards? What will you do?" Again, it's difficult to get a clear direction.

Then the last check-in was that there will be a single set of standards with strong emphasis on serving aboriginal children in that single set of standards. But they were to be produced by November of this year. They haven't been done, and it moves and moves.

They also had a contract with the Caring for First Nations Society to carry that work. That's been discontinued. So again, you've invested quite heavily in an agency to help you develop it. Now you're not working with that agency, so who will do it? These are all what I would call the shifting foundations. The foundation is not strong, and there has to be clarity.

I don't want MCFD to be dictatorial and go out and say, "We're going to this, this and this" and "We license you. You're an agency, therefore…." I mean, they should be collaborative, but they've got to take a position. It's like they're never sure where the direction is coming from. Well, it should come from evidence, best practice and good service. It shouldn't be driven based on personalities or whatever — historic, whatever.

I think one of the challenges is admitting that you've made mistakes, like that saying: "When you mess up, you fess up." If some of this is a mess, well, we should actually say: "It's a mess. Now how are we going to put it back together?" Maybe it's not humpty dumpty that goes back together, because that thing is not going to work, but there is a way to move forward.

The recommendations speak to that senior leadership and a clear policy. They don't have to solve everything, but at least get…. The tent flapping in the wind needs a couple of posts to hold it so it doesn't get blown away again. What will they be? I certainly have some strong biases from what I see, but I suppose the debriefing on this report is just going to be: "Can the ministry withstand the emotional reaction to the report?"

As you can imagine, even in the ministry there are people that disagree strongly, because they've been part of and been invested in these initiatives forever. In fact, in many instances you have senior members of the ministry retire or leave their position, and they're working for these organizations the next day. So there's not really an arm's-length evaluation. I think that's a concern to me, and I brought that up repeatedly, to say: "You can't fund things, then turn around and work for them the next day. It doesn't look right."

I'm not saying they did anything wrong. It just doesn't look like evidence-based, evaluative practice — not to mention: what does it have to do, actually, with kids? There's no policy. There's no stability. There are some promising indications I have — and I always have hope and promise — but unless they get strong leadership and clearly get in behind a collaborative process around the kids, I don't expect that a lot will come to a resolution. That raises another issue, I think, which is: what do you do?

Maybe there will have to be legislation. I don't know — something that will direct people to follow a lens and accountability. If they can't follow it under the CF&CSA and the Adoption Act and everything else, the transparency accountability act and all of the other standards that we have, something has to be brought to bear.

I did meet with Minister Bennett, who's responsible for core review, and say to Mr. Bennett and his senior advisors: "Okay, it's all fine with core review, but will you actually have a performance management outcome looking at outcomes for kids? Will you change your performance management so ministries like MCFD can't — I'm not saying to backdoor it — sort of get out of it by sending something over here? What about those issues?" I appreciate it's not within his mandate, but I strongly en-
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couraged him that it's a good thing to look at how performance management will happen in a ministry like MCFD.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a last point. I think there is an opportunity here for those discussions, which should happen around what direction to go; to be done in a collaborative approach — as you point out, not ministry-dictated because that certainly hasn't worked for aboriginal communities — but for that to be done through the Attorney General, where there is a clear mandate around legal requirements, around what works with treaty, non-treaty — what stage of the process First Nations are in.

I think there is an opportunity, through the Attorney General, to actually say: "Let's move the conversations that need to occur to where they should occur, instead of taking away from children and family supports. And over here in the ministry let's focus on children and families, and let's focus on making sure that those services are there."

I think there is a road map for those discussions to occur, as they should, but in the right place and without taking resources and services away from kids.

D. Plecas: Thank you, Mary Ellen. It's another report…. It's a good thing we read it before lunch so for those of us who wanted to throw up, we could do it on an empty stomach. I mean, this says to me…. I can appreciate the sensitivity with this. I really think there needs to be some digging further on this in a big way.

We can ask the question: how did it get there in the first place? An Auditor General would say this is unbelievable. How has it stayed this way, presumably, for some of those ten years anyway — handing out huge sums of money and, as per page 30, to organizations that do not have a single child on their caseload?

On average, this is costing…. I did the math on this while you were speaking, and it's $45,000 per child, to us. Then if you add in the federal moneys, it's $75,000 per child. I'm reminded that if you look at this in tandem with other reports we've received from you — like lack of plans — there are all kinds of indications that there's nothing happening. It really says that the problems are pretty deep here, pretty serious.

I also wondered, as I was reading through this and these figures: how much other moneys are coming into these same groups from some other source — other federal moneys, provincial moneys — all under the umbrella or guise of doing something for children and families? Is that really happening? It's particularly disturbing when we say in the same breath that amongst these people, we have poverty. It's just unbelievable.

I guess I would ask if there's any plan from your office — or maybe this committee could be doing something — that is really digging down deeper on this? I know it's incredibly sensitive, but I honestly just can't believe what I'm reading in this report. How is this even possible?

Maybe you could just comment. Is there some thinking about doing something more?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think, first of all, there are a lot of different pots of money we're talking about in service responsibilities.

In terms of the Indigenous Approaches regional aboriginal authority money. The regional aboriginal authority money sort of ended in 2009. I just, except for trying to learn a hard lesson and bringing it out….

I have to say that I'm not infrequently approached by people who were involved and have said: "Mary Ellen, you need to be an advocate for getting this going again." I have had to remind people repeatedly that the Representative for Children and Youth is the representative for children and youth, not for getting this thing going again. That has been a bone of contention. No doubt some of you have probably heard complaints about that. I think that staying an unwavering focus on children and youth is a big piece of this.

On the expenditures since. As you can imagine, behind the scenes I don't say: "Oh, give me all of your documents. I can't wait to do a public report and never talk to you." I talk to them every single week, every single month, to the point where I'm sure they're just sick and tired of hearing from me.

They did say to me: "We are going to do an assessment of the Indigenous Approaches projects and tell you how they fit." I diarize that, so every two weeks and month — I'm sure my staff can attest to this because they have to put up with it — of me saying, "By the way, where's that assessment? Where's that assessment? When's that going to be completed?" until finally: "Just send me everything you've got, even if it's not assessed, and I'll have a look at it."

But MCFD never assessed the Indigenous Approaches project. They launched it off the side of the desk. While it does sound laudable, they then never assessed it. They still haven't assessed it.

On a response to the report. They've been fairly silent about the report, laying low, I guess, wanting to see what everybody vents and so forth. A lot of people have come forward and said: "We did really good work." I'm like: "Well, maybe MCFD should audit your work then. Maybe the Auditor should audit your work." I know there have been forensic audits in one case. I don't know. Maybe people should audit the work. At the same time, I don't know if that's a good thing — to promote collaboration but to promote accountability.

I can't do much more with it. What can you do with an open-ended contract with no reporting? I mean, people can say things to me and say, "We've done this, this and this," but you have to actually go on the ground and see
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something. You're talking about planning without service.

I'm not sure what the next steps could be there, except strengthening the policy and moving it forward, which is why I made that suggestion.

In terms of the money: what other pots of money? I don't know. I appreciate that some of the entities that were funded will get money from other federal…. They'll get other federal money; they'll get other provincial money. Some might have money on missing women or other things that they're mandated to do work on as well.

What the entire envelope is across government, I don't know. Government has to reflect that, I guess. The Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, I suppose, would be the one to ask that question to.

I don't know that exactly. But I know what I'm working on — for instance, domestic violence…. I see activities…. It's unclear where the responsibility rests. Is it Justice? We wanted a provincial office of domestic violence to get sort of the whole thing together. I'm not sure they've really come to terms with it.

It does speak to one very significant point, though, which is that there is a significant provincial expenditure. I'm not saying it's sufficient to meet the needs. But the idea that the province does not have an investment in services and has proceeded without, for instance, a cost-sharing agreement with the federal government…. The province has made a significant investment.

In some areas, like child protection mediation, which I didn't include, that is a major investment that is doing really good work. The province has footed that bill almost completely, to do family group conferencing, child protection mediation — a lot of support for First Nations mediators to get on the roster and do work. I'm seeing a lot of good work there.

I didn't include the money. It's one of those things where it's not even in MCFD. It's in the AG budget, and every year there's never enough money for it. I've been constantly saying: "Why can't we put this in MCFD and make this work? This is a huge investment."

On the First Nations leadership. I am frequently told: "We're not getting anything." Well, actually, no: there is expenditure. But what's the service we get? I think that's a big issue. I'm not saying it's sufficient, but there is expenditure. We need to see service for that expenditure, at least for children.

D. Plecas: In sum, you could say that in recent years we have put over $1 billion into this specific problem without a policy and without any accountability.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Absolutely, and also, I think, without a functional relationship with the federal aboriginal affairs department. The federal aboriginal affairs department wants to invest in prevention, but what do they invest into?

It's not just the provincial government's role. There has to be a proper tripartite forum where these things get resolved appropriately.

The basic 101…. Quality assurance is quality assurance, and accountability for serving people is accountability for serving people. If you don't want to be accountable and you don't want to do service, then don't come to this. Go somewhere else. This is an area where you have to do it.

These are things where people say: "Well, we have to deal with a whole history of failed policies." I agree. I'm not against dealing with a whole history of failed policies, but don't repeat a history of failed policies by not dealing with the here and now.

I'm not sure what the challenge is, but government, for its part, can do its bit. Other people have to decide what they bring in.

But we have to remember this. MCFD has driven a lot of what we see here. Meanwhile, there are six service lines, some of which are withering on the vine and could use some strong collaboration.

D. Donaldson: I have a couple of questions. I hope, with the indulgence of the Chair, to get the answer to the first and then move on to the second.

I've got a lot to say about this report. I'm not sure if this is the best forum, but it'll be a good forum to get some things on the record from your perspective and my perspective.

I think the chronology was very helpful. This is an issue that's come in and out of my life for the last decade — basically through the chronology and the different approaches and before I was an MLA and now that I am an MLA.

I think that it's a shambles, and you point that out rightly. In some of your quotes from your introduction, you're not saying "they" — meaning, I believe, the delegated agencies and the Indigenous Approaches groups — did anything wrong. The government gave them the money. I also fully relate to your comment that it was difficult for you to understand a policy foundation that guides the approach.

Those are the two things I'm keeping in mind as a prelude to my comments, which are — and I believe you invited this — that I have to challenge some of the conclusions you've come to. I want to give you a chance to respond to those challenges and also to respond to what I think are some tweaks on recommendations that would be my perspective on it.

First, on the second recommendation. I want to introduce this by a story. An amazing young man, a 14-year-old Wet'suwet'en boy, came into my office last week. I believe he has forwarded the letter to your office that he brought into my office to talk to me about.

He's a Wet'suwet'en young man. He's 14 years old. He's Gitdumden clan, wolf clan. He's been in care, I under-
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stand, since he was four, so ten years of his life.

He came in and was delightful. We read through his letter together that he sent to you. I want to put on the record some of that letter.

"I am writing this letter because I heard that the government is making it harder to get money for the Office of Wet'suwet'en.

"I listened to Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond talking on CBC radio. She said that aboriginal youth and children aren't getting services. But I get a lot of services, such as youth and elders camp, youth camp, men's camp and family camps.

"At these camps I learned to make drums, help others with drums and to thank the animal for taking its life for us, so we could have it. I learned how to throw the right hock to the right and the left hock to the left, and the same with the back hocks of the animal. We also learned how to trap animals.

"I meet new people and elders and hear stories from elders passed on and on. We learned where our territory is, how big it is and where to fish. We learn how to respect animals and how to respect our people and others. We learn about bullying, cyberbullying, preventable suicide, abuse and residential schools."

His point was not lost on me. He's part of the ANABIP program that the Office of Wet'suwet'en has initiated under the Indigenous Approaches funding. ANABIP is an acronym meaning "we're talking about our laws, our ways." I won't attempt the Wet'suwet'en terminology for the acronym.

I think you talked about the six service delivery pillars, and you mentioned cultural support to a child in care. To me, this letter speaks to cultural support to a child in care. Then I read in your statement, in the findings on page 52, that $66 million has been expended on these change initiatives and not a single child directly served.

I thought that would be a good opportunity to allow you to respond and to advise why you believe that this type of information wasn't available for the report, and your assessment, if that's possible, about how many more examples like this of direct service delivery to aboriginal children in care under the Indigenous Approaches funding are in existence. That's one part of the question.

The second is based on your response to that. How would that impact your recommendation No. 2 — "to suspend open-ended initiatives…to re-profile funds to support those much-needed direct services" — when this seems to be an example of direct services, and yet for some reason it wasn't able to be considered in your report?

First of all, I'm not comfortable with identifying the name of a child in care. I don't think it's appropriate to do that, so I think I'd ask that we consider striking that from the record, just because there are privacy interests. To identify a child in care…. I know you didn't do that on purpose. But I think it's always a challenge when a child in care is identified, so if we can, in the context of our Hansard, look at removing the name, that would be helpful. Maybe there has to be a decision on that. But in any event, I'll just say that, because that's a concern. I appreciate if the child wants to be identified, but we still have to protect them.

A couple of things. I have received, certainly, a very strong pushback on the suggestion that no children were served by some of the projects, probably none more than the Wet'suwet'en wellness initiative. So if it's helpful, because I go into quite a bit of analysis…. I look forward to meeting with them and talking to them. In fact, I look forward to meeting this child as well. The Wet'suwet'en, in their reporting, have said to me that they started doing some of these direct camps and services in May 2012, first of all.

What they've been doing is they've been negotiating since 1989 to reclaim jurisdiction to provide child welfare services. Their wellness framework goal is to create a completely separate First Nations or Wet'suwet'en child welfare model, which would require their own law and their own policy separate from the child welfare system in British Columbia. So they are one of these projects that would go forward.

They've had various phases — phase 1, for instance, to compare their conceptual model to the real world. April 2013 to March 2014 would be a demonstration period on how their model is being used to inform and guide practice. There's nothing specific about the practice, but there's just some concept about the work that they're doing. They're laying it out.

It's sort of outside the period of the reporting, but nevertheless, in the past summer they did have four camps. They ran four camps as part of their project. One was a women's empowerment camp; one was a family soapberry week; and a family camp and a youth cultural camp. Total number of participants in those camps was 109 people. Children and youth, I'm not sure; I think it was about 14. But I also know that they have had workshops and focus groups, with about 199 people. Those are meetings talking about their model and where they want to go.

I think it's really important to note in the report that I'm saying they have an inherent right of self-government. If they want to define their self-government process and move forward, they can.

But the child that you indicated who wrote a letter…. There is no indication in the MCFD system that he was provided with a service with respect to his needs. He obviously did receive some cultural support, which is good. A child's file needs to be updated. In fact, I checked in the region because there was a suggestion — I was amazed — 200 young people received a service. There is no indication in any file in the region that in any of the six service lines of the ministry any services were provided to those children.

Now, maybe they did receive a service of cultural sup-
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port. Cultural support is a mandated service for children in care. Every child in care in that region that's connected to the Wet'suwet'en should get cultural support. They should have a contract under the child welfare system to do cultural support. They should be mandated. They should do it. It should be in the file.

So I'm highly supportive of them doing this work. This speaks exactly to the disconnection I worry about, which is that they've put over here and MCFD has no knowledge of how their work can come back in to this important thing.

We talked before about planning for children in care. Again, I'm not going to name this child. He's 14. He has a life book. When he ages out of care, he'll get that life book about his experience. Will there be anything written in that life book about his participation in this? No, because there's no record. I'm not saying it's all about recordkeeping. I give total credit to the community for what they're doing. It's just a real disconnection between: what is service and what is planning for service?

They're community planning, and that is not a bad thing. Furthermore, I know for a point of fact in that community, in that nation, people who received money under these Indigenous Approaches are goodhearted people. They're hard-working, goodhearted people. They'll pick up a little boy and take him to a birthday party. They'll have lunch with him. They'll do things with him. He may or may not be a child in care. It's a good thing. It's just not connected to service in a file.

So when I come out with a report and they say, you know, "These are the things that are happening," I'm so happy it's happening. Can it not be connected to the files of the ministry and be good work? I think it has to be, because the ministry doesn't have any record. They do not keep a record of that child's file.

The fact that they share his information with their Member of the Legislative Assembly, who, in turn, names that child in the committee, says to me — no offence — that there's something very wrong. That seems to me to be using a child as opposed to actually talking about the service. It might be because the ministry has encouraged this kind of thing. Children in care need to be served properly and effectively. Cultural support is part of it, and it has to be meaningful. There should be a cultural plan for him.

My response to the issue is really: there's limited information around that project, around how it connects to the six service lines. Should they start a self-government table and have their own law? They can, but it can't be run by MCFD, according to my recommendations, because they can't do it. But that boy should be served and have cultural support by that First Nation that he belongs to. They should talk about all the good things he does in his child and family service file.

I don't care if they contract that out to the Wet'suwet'en Nation. They can. They say, "You can do all the cultural support." We had a Roots program. It got discontinued in that region because they had no money. Yet this program was doing something. I would like a proper Roots program.

This speaks to that whole issue of no collaboration working together. I'm hoping behind this envelope of money — obviously the more recent year, the $8 million, $9 million, $10 million, $11 million that goes out — there are more kids like that, that people just did things for, because in a community they do things for them. But I don't want it to be a child-serving system which is just: if you decide to do this, you do it. It's got to be mandated — high-quality service providers keeping proper records, coordination, and so on.

I look forward to talking to them. I look forward to responding to the child as well. The idea that a child was served with a service within MCFD as a part of those indigenous initiatives — it didn't happen. But it doesn't mean that they didn't give support to some children or a child attended a camp. Certainly, it looks like there were about 14 kids that did attend these camps. They're probably great camps. It's just not connected to the core function of the ministry.

D. Donaldson: Since you put it on the record about supposition about who might have encouraged this child to come to the office, I'm not aware of any of that. I want to make sure that it's clear that the child came with their guardian, and I asked them about making the letter public, and they said that would be fine.

I do take your advice on striking from the record, though, because you have a lot more experience than I do on this matter. But I want to make sure that it's on the record that I consulted with not only the child, who is a child, but their guardian about making this public.

My second question would be, again, going back…. I think the ministry has a lot to answer for on this file. Therefore, the government has a lot to answer for on this file. But you asked to get feedback, that your focus is a service-oriented organization — MCFD — and that being your primary lens. When you look at the evidence, I don't think that the six service lines are working for aboriginal children, based on the evidence. I think you've brought that up — poor outcomes.

Then you went on to say that…. I think it was in relation to delegated agencies and perhaps Indigenous Approaches groups doing everything on their own — "Just leave us alone." That was problematic, in your estimation — the inability to have a collaborative, integrated system with the best interests of children at heart.
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I think there are issues and problems with the current integrated system, and you've done well to outline those in previous reports. So again, going back to MCFD, the government's policy approach on this in relation to the first recommendation, which was around, perhaps, these governance discussions, would be better served through funding through the Attorney General's office.

The history that the current government has with the approach to aboriginal rights and title is taking the approach that aboriginal title and rights were extinguished when the first European settlers laid foot on British Columbia soil. That's the history. More recently, in the William case, in front of the Supreme Court, the same Attorney General's office that you're referring to made arguments to roll back some of what was won under Delgamuukw in the Supreme Court of Canada.

I can see why some of the groups, wanting to advance the indigenous approach, would think that going to the Attorney General's office with this kind of discussion would not be the best venue for them when they see the evidence of the approach the current government's been taking in that regard. I was wondering why you thought that separate funding under experts within the Ministry of Children and Family Development wouldn't be a better place to have this kind of governance discussion.

M. Turpel-Lafond: A couple of things. First of all, I think we have to be careful about comparing apples and oranges. There are land claims issues and there are other issues. The report is very clear to say that there is an inherent right of self-government if it's a nation. The Wet'suwet'en are a nation. They want to exercise their self-government authority and exercise power over child welfare. They can, but it can't be controlled and regulated by MCFD.

Their report says that they want to create an agency to take over all the services provided by MCFD, Health, Education, Social Development and MARR. Then they want to deliver them. That's fine. MCFD can't run that process.

Now, vis-à-vis MCFD, if they were in a process and they were going to do it and had to coordinate and work it out, absolutely they'd have to come back and have that. But at this point, I don't think, actually, anybody in government even reads their report about what they're planning to do.

The idea that they're better off getting some money, whatever…. I don't mind supporting people to have plans, but there's no one in government who's going to look at doing that. When is someone actually going to tell them straight up that this is just something in MCFD that no one has any credibility on? So my whole point of the report is to come out and say, and I've said this to the ministry: "Are you going to tell them that it requires laws to be changed and a decision by the Attorney General of Canada and the Attorney General of British Columbia to support it?"

We have tripartite legislation on education. That was done. It's not like we can't do it. We have a tripartite agreement on health — it's not legislative, but it's health — which created a service agency. It's an NGO-type service agency. What the Wet'suwet'en are asking for is a separate governance entity outside the existing child welfare law, outside the existing PHSA and health authorities, outside the existing school districts and outside the existing Social Development system in B.C. So it has to have some status.

MCFD has no capacity to…. They don't even know what that means. I'm not saying that they're unintelligent, but they have no understanding and no responsibility for those policy areas.

Are they funding something valuable and useful? They might be. But maybe if they pin down the policy to know how it fits, it would be good.

Meantime, I would say to the Wet'suwet'en and to the families there: if, while you're doing that big initiative that you want to have to take everything over…. If, at the same time, you think you'd like to do all the cultural support for kids in care, kids in the child welfare system that are Wet'suwet'en, well, let's get that contract going too.

If you want to do customary adoption recognizing all your First Nations tribal laws, practices and values, we can do that right now. There are four or five things that could be done immediately — maybe help build their capacity and experience — and MCFD hasn't come and told them that.

I've been pushing MCFD: "Why don't you give them some options where they can really build on the strengths that they have and the talent that they have in terms of their investment here, back into those areas?" That requires the government and the management of MCFD to take real leadership. Right now they can just say: "Here's a bit of money for next year. Submit a report." There's no negotiation table. It's just activity over here.

It's still valuable. I'm not devaluating it. I'm just saying MCFD can't manage that process. An agency across five ministries? MCFD has six service lines. It will never be able to have the authority to create an agency across six service ministries. I mean, that's based on the Wet'suwet'en's plan, right? They changed their plan. They want to be an agency providing service delivery in one. I'm sure they can, but we need senior leadership on aboriginal services and MCFD to sit down and negotiate with people in terms of how much money and who you serve.

You can't just plan for five, six years and not serve. I'm not saying they planned to do that. But we need to be clear who they serve.

You mentioned the one child. What about the other 65 kids that are in care? Are they going to get the service? I think they could. These are practical and positive things
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that could be worked out. But this speaks exactly to the type of discussion that I think will be valuable, and I encourage you to have it with the ministry, as well. That is: "What am I to tell people — that you funded to do something that you really don't intend to do? What are you going to do to support them to do what they think is right for their children?"

My producing this report has caused no end of frustration on the part of some of those people. They can shoot the messenger if they like, but the issue is: there really isn't anything for this young boy to have connected back into a system. He has his community, which is good, but I'd like that community relationship to be sustained through good policy, practice and linkages. That can be achieved. That's not complex. It's just that nobody puts any time in it because they've put their time into something else.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I can confirm that we have connected with Hansard, and at least in the Blues, in the written record, the boy's name will be struck. But we have no control over the audio, because it's already been out. Okay?

I have two people left on my list: Moira and Donna. Keeping in mind that we need to talk about the last item on our agenda, perhaps if we could complete this section in the next ten, 15 minutes. I think that would give us enough time to discuss the other item.

M. Stilwell: First of all, I just want to go on record as saying this. You had a librarian in to look at those 70 documents and CLIFF them. Can we get them back organized now so we can read them?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Actually, I appreciate that question, because one of the issues that I've had with MCFD is what we do with the 76,000 documents. Take them back, right? Yeah, I'd like them. I understand former Minister Abbott is doing a PhD in this area. Maybe I should ship it to his house. I don't know.

M. Stilwell: Working off some of the things that my colleagues said — some that I agree with, some that I don't necessarily agree with…. I won't presume to speak, because I don't have knowledge of the past ten years, but clearly, when there's a lack of clarity of vision, it comes from a lack of clarity of policy and a lack of clarity around political goals.

I think you answered my first question. That is: when we look at the chart of the money…. You did explain that it's specific but not complete, and it raises more questions than it necessarily answers. There are all sorts of issues around aboriginal first rights, lands and title that are not related to MCFD, but relations and progress on those files can get muddied because they intersect. You named at least five ministries that I think we should probably talk to, to try and understand how we can help your work in this report move forward in some way.

One of my questions, which I think you answered, was: was it your impression, when you looked through all these documents, that some of the funding, the money, for these so-called indigenous projects or MCFD tables that were going…? The money was given, again, not for any bad cause but had to do with relationships or goals in other silos that you wouldn't necessarily be able to…. That was maybe part of the issue. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

M. Turpel-Lafond: In the early period and possibly even up to present. I think that in some ways it's a way to develop a relationship using resources of a ministry that has a significant amount of resources as opposed to other ministries that don't.

Certainly, in dealing with senior officials who have been involved in the area, they continually say to me: "Well, we don’t have a trusting relationship, so we sort of have to invest in the trusting relationship." I guess that really hits up against a problem, because certainly my view of it is that you don't buy trust; you have trust to do work for children. When you get into the business of buying trust, things are not good.

M. Turpel-Lafond: It's pretty hard to have quality assurance, because how much do you trust…. "I'd trust you more if you gave me more money." Again, it's just that sort of undercurrent where in bringing it forward with officials to say: "That doesn’t really make sense."

At the same time, I appreciate that there have been many failed policies of the past and a lot of inappropriate activities and whatever, but why somehow does it all come down to this ministry that's got a service mandate to make it possible to build this relationship? But actually, did the relationship even get built? It seems to me that people might just be as angry and upset as ever.

Furthermore, they went off on their own, and they are expecting something to happen. Actually, people are expecting something to happen, and someone needs to tell them: "Actually, there's no plan." That's the bigger challenge, I think.

M. Stilwell: So just to close that off, intuitively when you hear that somebody is directed to fund all projects regardless, that tells me it's not about the projects. There may be secondary gain, but again, there's no quality assurance for it.

Getting to the quality assurance, I would just like to enter an observation. Your recommendation 5, the list of data points — intuitively, to somebody who knows nothing about it, a lot of those data points would seem rel-
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evant and important. But having been through medicine, where we collect lots of relevant data points, in the end, outcome is the data point. I mean, these are instruments to help people with evidence and best practices and reporting back, and they are directed towards a specific outcome, which I'm sure will be down the line.

The final is a question that…. Just intuitively, based on the work you've done, you've said repeatedly — and people have brought up incidents of good work being done — there must be pockets of high function that could be scalable. Are you able to describe that?

You described promising indicators. Allowing that the report back has not been as fulsome as we need it to be in terms of accountability of expenditure, my question is: do you have observations or recommendations that you would like to make about areas that are clearly succeeding and where they could be scalable into other communities or other groups here? You mentioned one going from kind of zero to 97 percent. I mean, that demonstrates capacity, ability, drive — all the things you want.

I just was curious if you had some observations. Linked to that, can you map back the number of complaints to these organizations? In other words, do you believe that there's a correlation…? It might not be strict, but is there a generalizable discussion that you could say: "These are the groups that I get the least complaints for." Or it may just relate to people not coming and complaining. Or is there a relationship, do you think, in your experience?

M. Turpel-Lafond: …but you've asked all the right questions, which I'm really pleased to hear, because they are important, and they are not easy to answer. Some of them you'll need to ask the ministry, but you've asked the right categories.

First of all, on quality assurance. Well, the indigenous projects piece has no quality assurance to it, nor did the regional aboriginal authorities. The RAA was a failed process. The Indigenous Approaches is something else. It's something still growing, but we're not sure what the roots are, what the branches are, what the leaves are.

On the quality assurance for the delegated aboriginal agencies. There needs to be quality assurance. There has been the sense that there are no compliance-based audits as part of that. So when I did the audit of plans of care, we audited delegated agencies as well. They had pretty much the same outcomes as the ministry.

Some of them, like Kw'umut Lelum, went and turned it around and brought that right up to speed. But it's not like the ministry is doing compliance audits to show it, because they don't have a compliance audit program. And they are actually the ones saying: "We want a compliance audit program because we want to show the good work we're doing."

When you don't have quality assurance and accreditation and rigour, then it also speaks to that, right? They like the goal-setting. They like the challenge. I think there is a good quality of work in many, many places.

We do get complaints, but mostly we get calls for unmet service needs for children and youth, right? That's the complex piece.

On your other question, which I think is a really good question and speaks to something that I've said to the ministry for some time, which is on the Indigenous Approaches projects. They should take them one by one. My recommendation was to stop funding them and re-profile what you could re-profile into service and collaborative, effective support.

The only thing is…. I mean, people need to provide service based on an open RFQ-type process, where you don't just have it in this region because they've always had it. It has to be open to everyone. There has to be fairness and appropriateness in public expenditure.

But in terms of those, I am completely confident that in behind many of them, certainly on the cultural support…. Cultural support for kids in care could be done across the board with a good collaborative model. I mean, there are things that could be done. But that requires someone to actually call and sit down, and maybe everyone just wants to keep doing this. That's the concern. So I have said for two years: re-profile this into service.

Actually, some of them now, like the last year, have been a bit more re-profiled into some service, whether it's a cultural camp…. It may not be for kids who need the service, but nevertheless, it's still something. That's good. But you need to go through it and see what you can do with it.

You also have to be very careful that you don't use your current flawed process to develop your new process. Everybody always wants to salvage what they can. That's a good human instinct. But MCFD has six service lines. It's services for children and families. All kinds of children and families — aboriginal children and families — are important, but all kinds of families need to get service. They have to show that performance and that skill.

Actually, one of the great things about the Ministry of Children and Families is that when you bring together caregivers, like foster parents, who serve a whole range of kids, they actually learn a lot from each other. So streaming everything into one stream and never sharing can actually really undermine good service. I think that's the same we see with health authorities. They all come together. They do quality assurance. They share. MCFD has to get more of that quality assurance, sharing — not have a separate program for this person here and a separate program for that person there.

I appreciate there will be unique needs, and there are
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rights that these aboriginal children have that are unique. They're already in the statutes in British Columbia. They're not being followed. So that's the concern.

Can it be redone? You should really ask the ministry about that. I've been encouraging them to do it for two years. They might be a little bit too frightened to step forward and do it, or they may receive direction that they should just keep doing this because it develops good relations where otherwise they may not be getting along.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Donna's next, recognizing we've got five, ten minutes max.

I'm not seeing any other questions. I've got one. I don't know if it's quick or not, but my question is quick.

I appreciated what people were saying, that we really do need to recognize what's working well. But do you have a provincial model in other areas of Canada that you would consider we should emulate or at least look at?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, the delegated aboriginal agencies have been around for more than 25 years. We're not the only place to have them.

I think the one issue is good service with respect to aboriginal children and families. There are different good models in different places. Sometimes it's in the health care system. Sometimes it's in the education system.

I've said this repeatedly in the committee. You know, we've done pretty well off reserve improving aboriginal education. We're not nearly as good as we can, where only half the kids are graduating within the expected six years. It's a lot better than where we started out, at 22 percent.

On reserve it's not as good. You know, you're not seeing that information, and I think it should come out.

So there are pockets. There are always pockets. There are places that we, I think, do a good job even in B.C. around providing good cultural support, good collaboration, but it is sometimes despite policies.

I come back to the big finding of this report, which is it's a chaotic and hectic field — perverse performance measures. Something is unpopular; therefore, we don't do it, and we don't discuss the hard issues.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development is a very important ministry that provides significant and essential services. It has a huge promise, and we need to support the ministry to succeed. They have to be able to do their work. You know, I'm not the critic of the Ministry of Children and Families. I want the ministry to do well. I think we all want the ministry to do well. But we want it to do well by providing actual service to kids.

Yes, work with parents and communities and families and schools and others, but make sure that we do not forget it's about serving children when they need it. If there's a safety issue, they don't hide under the bed. Someone actually comes in, does a proper investigation and makes sure they're well supported. If they have a serious issue with mental health, someone comes in and the family gets the support that they need. If it's a special need, we have an approach.

So much work has gone into this thing we've talked about today, where you kind of get the feeling like: "Well, we've put so much work into it. Something good must come out of it." I, too, would like to see something good come out of it. But sometimes people have to actually take it apart, look at it in incredible detail and say: "Well, maybe we didn't really get that much out of it. Maybe we're actually in just as bad of a pickle today as we were ten years ago" and "Okay, I don't want to blame and name and whatever, but let's move forward and do it a little bit differently."

The ministry needs to say what they will do to move forward and how they will…. They can reject this report. They can accept this report. They can reject part of it. They can do whatever they like, but they have to face up to the fact that they have to make a move. Where they are right now is dead stalled. They have to make a move, so what direction will their move be in?

I guess maybe they'll read the winds, and you'll see. I don't expect you'll get an answer to that tomorrow, but we will work on it, and we will want to see evidence-informed practice. We want to see quality assurance. We want to see good relationships with people because people want to work together on kids, not because people feel a grievance from the past and you have to pay them to feel better. It's not about reparations; it's about the children today and into the future.

I always say that childhood is short — 988 weeks. We have an opportunity to get in there and do the service. This was an 11-year, 12-year process. When you step back and look at it, no one could possibly have really realized that they were going to spend $66 million on this. We could have bought a complete robust residential system of supports. We could have bought a world-class mental health system.

Somehow we've got to stop this type of thinking that allows us to get on a track and not come back to it. There will be many, many people who will say: "It could have worked if this, this, this and this." Well, you know, I agree. Maybe there's something "could've, should've, would've." But it's sort of, again, like parenting children: "I could have done better if I'd studied." "Well, we're not going to go back and change that. You're going to go back and study from here on in." I mean, the course correction is the course correction. When the information comes out, what do you do with it? I think that's the difficult thing.

But I think an all-party support…. The important work that this committee does — this is a very significant area
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of work. No other jurisdiction in Canada has brought this issue out and actually discussed it at this level with this degree of interest and commitment. I think that, in and of itself, is a good step forward.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you very much, Mary Ellen, and also to the committee members for your very thoughtful questions. We've got lots of food for thought for tomorrow and moving forward as well.

Maybe what we'll do is take a quick five-minute recess to allow Mary Ellen to collect her stuff, and then we've got at least 20 minutes to discuss our next project and what we're going to do about it.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We have just the committee members right now, together. What we're going to do for the next remaining 20 minutes or so is talk about the idea of conducting a special project.

In front of you, you should have…. The Clerk did provide us with some background material, a proposal for a committee special project which she sent out prior to today's meeting, as well as kindly provided us with the annual report of 2009-2010 where the previous special project was conducted on child poverty.

We have the option of kind of following that same format or doing something completely different. I thought that maybe what we could do, between myself and the Deputy Chair, is just throw it out to the committee. You can make comments on whether or not we've actually….

We've talked about the topic of youth mental health and addictions. I don't know…. I don't have a feeling of the entire committee whether or not we've agreed to that topic yet, but I thought we could throw it out first. If we can at least accomplish a discussion on what we want to talk about, then at another time we can figure out how we're going to go do about it, considering that we've only got 20 minutes — unless you want to go longer. But I doubt people want to do that.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you to the Chair for bringing this issue forward. The Chair and myself have had a couple of conversations about special projects as a direction for this committee, and I think both of us feel that it's a positive.

The opportunity to take on a special project is a positive around the committee's work. It's an opportunity to give profile, if you look at…. Thank you to the Clerk for putting together the information in the proposal. I think it's a very good direction for us to follow. It gives us an opportunity to raise the profile of something around the province for the public that's important.

I'll put out my two cents' worth around the topic area. I raised the issue of youth mental health and addictions for a very specific reason. I think the opportunity to address the stigma related to youth mental health is a critical issue in our province. There are many other issues that people often look at and say: "Oh, it's a health issue" or "We understand it's a medical issue."

There is still a great deal of stigma around mental health and addictions, particularly from youth. A lot of the bullying issues that we see go on in this province click back to the issue of youth mental health. A lot of the challenges that we see in schools are related to youth mental health and a lot of the pressures that we're seeing.

For me, the reason for putting it forward is that I think it is an opportunity to address some of that stigma, for us as a committee to say we believe it's important to talk about it, to be public about it. I think to not hide it away sends an important public signal that we believe it's important, that we believe it has value and that we don't believe it should be hidden away. We believe it should be talked about.

It also fits nicely with the special project approach, which would be an opportunity for families and youth to speak directly to us — not to have all of the providers, not to go through that process but to actually give the youth and their families a voice. I think that, again, fits the mandate of the committee nicely, where it isn't a chance for all the usual people who have the chance to talk to us as MLAs, but perhaps people who don't normally have a voice — those youth and those families.

M. Karagianis: Having participated in the previous special project on poverty, it was just an exceptional opportunity. I hope the Chair will concur with me in that it was an exceptional opportunity for us to hear data that was brought in by a whole variety of experts. It was very informative. I think it added, for all of us, to the topic of poverty and gave us a deeper understanding of it.

I do like the fact that this committee took on that challenge, and we were very successful with that. It fit really well in our mandate. I'd like to see us do another project. I'd like to see us do a couple more projects in the coming number of years, if we could.

There may be some other topics that would also be really germane to the issues of children and youth. I think things like domestic violence would be something, perhaps, that at some point in the future we could also
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take on. The children's representative has brought that topic up in this forum more than one time, and I think that's something we could also pursue at some point in the future.

The idea right now of working on a youth mental health project, I think, is really timely. There have been many more high-profile stories right now about youth suicides. There are considerable resources and concerns and thoughts being put into the issue of youth mental health at all levels of government. We see the federal government trying to come to grips with some of the on-line bullying and things that occur that have contributed to youth suicide.

I would love to see us do this project. I think it would be really informative for us, for the public as well — also give us something to take into the Legislature that I think would focus on a topic that all of us hear about every day in our constituency offices. Maybe there's a way for us to elevate the discussion at the legislative level, which I think would be excellent. So I'm very supportive of the idea of us doing this.

D. Plecas: I think it's a great idea, and especially if we have the…. I know we would all agree that there are other things that we could look at as well. It would be great if we could have that effort pointed towards something very specific. I'm just thinking….

We all know that there are some significant issues with regards to providing services for youth with mental health and addictions issues, but since we already know that, if we could think in terms of: what can we do, or what do we need to do to be seriously addressing those? I'm sure you were thinking of that, but if we could just make sure. Let us have something that points towards asking the government to take action on something.

D. Barnett: As we all know, we can't keep doing things the same and expecting different results. That's the first thing I'm going to say. When I read these reports and I listen to the commissioner here today, I find it very interesting.

My personal opinion is I live with a lot of the issues that we've discussed here today. I have 15 First Nations bands surrounding my area that I work with. The issues — we talk about the issues of children, the inefficiencies of agencies, which we all talk about, and the $66 million. I think I'd like to do something with existing programs we have before I start to look at something else. I think we've got to fix something before we can go in to do another project. That's just my personal opinion.

I live with it every day, and they're in my office. I can tell you a lot of the inefficiencies out there. It's not because of lack of money; it's because of guidance and direction.

M. Stilwell: First I'm going to do what you're not supposed to do, and that's quickly reiterate what Darryl said. I think it's a great topic. I know the previous Deputy Chair and previous Chair did a lot of really good work around the poverty report. My interest is about the impact and influence, so I would kind of combine or work off what both my colleagues have said — that I totally think youth mental health is worth the work and that we should do it.

I would assume that, as we go into it, we may hone it down to something more specific, be it youth suicide or resources for high-risk youth suicide in remote areas. You know, something that we can really nail down so that we have an ask that we can push forward within the Legislature and also in terms of public awareness. We have to get that buy-in.

M. Bernier: I appreciate the comments over there from people who have been on this committee before — that avenue of people being able to come in and express their values, their concerns, I think, in front of the committee.

For myself, I hate doing a project just for the sake of doing a project. When I see these continually coming in front of us with lists of recommendations and…. That's why I'm looking forward to tomorrow too, with the ministry, because I need to get the other side of this.

I need to understand, not only from this. If we're going to do a project, what are the outcomes, can they be implemented, and what are the steps that we have to go through as a committee, our role and our mandate here, to ensure that there's something productive at the end of it and not just another one of these that sits on a shelf? That to me can be just as frustrating for the people who will spend their time advocating in front of us for an issue.

I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, youth mental health and addictions, along with…. We could probably throw a dart at a board of a hundred different things around children and youth that would be important. I look at this as being another step of maybe, I think as you mentioned, many projects to be considered.

I don't want to set ourselves up for failure either. I mean, that can be just as frustrating. Myself, I look at the experience on the board and go along with some of that, but I'm looking forward to hearing tomorrow from the ministry side of things to see if something, I guess, maybe tweaks for me out of what they say, as well, for a direction to go — if that makes any sense.

J. Martin: I'm not as enthusiastic as some on that. First, I think mental health and addiction are two separate items. Obviously, there is a lot of overlap and interplay. But to try to approach and do a commendable job, I think,
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is way, way too broad as a starting point.

More and more specifically, as Moira alluded to and Mike just mentioned, I think that there's some stuff in the reports that we've been seeing that is much more manageable as a side project that can be a contribution to the committee's goal overall.

Obviously, the mental health and addiction plays into the subject matter we're dealing with. I think in some of these reports there are specific areas that we could turn into a project and be very helpful to the ministry in giving them something concrete — an action plan with outcomes — as opposed to kind of a talking literature review of the state of the subject matter with mental health, addiction.

J. Rice: I guess in response to Mike's comments, for me, today's topics in particular weren't necessarily mental health–focused. Some of our other meetings were. So I understand your desire to want to hear the other side and have more of a probably balanced perspective.

I just don't think that has anything really to do about us taking a project on, such as mental health. Just because right now, today, we might not have that drilled down to exactly what does that look like and what does that mean.

I just hope that we could be in agreement that this is an important topic that we should be championing. I'm definitely not interested in creating another report that sits on a shelf and collects dust. I'm young. I'm full of energy, and I want to work hard. I want to do a good job on this committee.

I'm raring to go. I'm just not a report-dust-collecting kind of person. I just hope that that energy would be infectious.

M. Karagianis: I just want to sort of touch on a couple of points that members of the committee have raised. When the previous Chair and this previous committee took on the issue of poverty, that was a pretty wide topic — much wider than youth mental health, I would say. We were able to compile some really fantastic reading material. It was really about educating the committee and then taking that and educating the Legislature.

It's not about us trying to resolve issues between the ministry and the children's representative. She reports to us. We are only created as a conduit for her to report to and, therefore, to be able to take her reports to the ministries responsible and to the Legislature. But we don't have any power to take any action out of any of her recommendations. That's her job. And I think she does a really brilliant job of it as well.

I think we just have to remember what our role is here. We are a conduit, rather than an agency that can take on or resolve or solve these issues or look deeper into them. I don't know how much deeper we would look into anything than what she has already done.

But I do think the idea of taking on a fairly broad topic and saying, "What kind of information can we compile to educate ourselves, to educate the Legislature, on a topic that we all hear about, in some form or other, frequently in our constituency offices, frequently in the news…?" I would say let's not be daunted or try and constrain the discussion too much on youth mental health services or youth mental health.

When we took on the poverty issue, it was somewhat the same. It was like a big, broad topic. Where do you begin to grapple with poverty? Where do you start?

Well, we had just some fantastic information that came to us from a whole variety of places — some from First Nations expertise, some people who talked about, just generally, all kinds of poverty issues, around housing and a whole variety of things. It was a great educational process for us and gave us something to take forward to the Legislature that also elevated the understanding of the Legislature around these issues.

I would just say for us not to put too fine a point on the fact that we have to create something here that is a solution to anything that the children's representative is doing, or in fact to what the ministry is doing. We're the conduit. We'll ask the ministry lots of questions tomorrow about these reports and, perhaps, other things that we've been enlightened on or, you know, have found thought-provoking today.

I would just say let's not dismiss this as somehow being a topic that we couldn't tackle in some way. I think a day session where we gather information and listen to witnesses would be a terrific addition to the work of this committee.

I just know that the success, previously, far surpassed anything we'd anticipated and was much more educational and informative than what we'd thought such a wide topic would give us. It was an excellent experience. And I think the information that went to the Legislature was excellent as well. I would just urge people not to perhaps think too far outside of the mandate of this committee either.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I wanted to just add to that as well. Not only is it not our job to get in the middle of the representative and the ministry; it's also not our job, as a committee, to run the ministry. That's the ministry's job. Some of us may wish and want to be doing that, but that's not our job.

Our job is to be accountable when the ministry comes, to hold them to account and to ask the questions we need to, and as the representative's reports come forward. But it's not our job to actually put together a report and say, "Here, Ministry. This is what you should do" on this issue or this report or this topic. That's not our job.

And I think, in fact, if you take a look at the sheet
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around the special project, the terms of reference say: "…to foster greater awareness and understanding among legislators and the public." So I think that is part of a special project: to raise that awareness. The reason I lean towards youth mental health — and I think it has been a really good discussion around what we want to look at — is that I think it is an issue where raising awareness addresses some of the stigma that's there already.

That is part of the challenge with mental health: that there is a stigma and that people don't talk about it and don't raise awareness about it because they're afraid to. They're afraid to raise a mental health issue for people. There still is a "Let's be in the dark about this. Let's keep quiet. Let's not tell our employer. Let's not tell the school. Let's not tell your family."

To me, it’s more shining a light in doing that, raising awareness around youth mental health, that I think provides that mandate that's part of our committee. That's part of why I think it's worth looking at.

And then I think it's the job to look at, as others have said, how we make sure that this is useful, how we make sure that we're not going off on a tangent, how we make sure that we're not being impractical on all of those things. I agree with all of those comments.

I think that's, then, the job, if we decide to take something on, for us as a committee and for whoever we put to take this special project and to be a working group around it, to make that happen and to keep us focused.

D. Donaldson: I think, on the practicality side, we can address that. My larger focus is on us as public people now, right? We're elected MLAs, we've got roles to fill, and we are leaders in our communities.

I came from a community, before I was an MLA, that had the highest suicide rate amongst young people in the province one year. It was over 200 attempts, so I know the stigma that's attached to that quite well.

For people in our communities to see us as public figures taking this topic on — without even getting to the issue of what could be the practical outcomes but just giving people some hope — I think that's important.

Having three years on the Finance Committee, I also understand how what we take back to our respective caucuses — cauci? — is important.

So I think whether it's conversations we have in the hallway with our colleagues or formally within caucus, I mean, we have a role to take what we've learned here and spread it out amongst our colleagues and profile things. I saw that happen with the Finance Committee, so I think I take that role seriously as a person belonging to a select standing committee.

D. Plecas: Taking off from Carole's point about the importance of it being something which we can highlight, I'm tempted to say that's just about everything. One of the things that exasperates me is over and over and over again hearing about how things never change. We don't talk about how things were last year; we're talking about decades. It isn't just here, I know, for the work I do. Like, I'm talking about things not changing in 40 years. It's the same list of issues and the same consequences.

This is probably a tall order, but it seems to me something could be beneficial on, say, a topic like mental health. I think it's becoming pretty clear that that is a problem which is growing. You know, we're talking more and more people coming forward with mental health issues and more serious ones, and there's associated enormous cost to that — social cost, cost to families. It's really frightening. I'm wondering if we could do something around the idea of, speaking again about mental health issues with children, getting to action. Like, what is it?

What is the list of things that are holding us back from moving things forward in a constructive way? Why are we constantly having to ask the same thing over again, when the problem is so obvious to so many people?

I've got to tell you. In my role with the crime reduction panel — like, in my work otherwise — I hardly go a day without hearing about concerns about mental health issues and addictions. I think John is right. They're so big, both of them. We'd better just be doing one, but I think it would be such a great contribution. I mean, focusing on mental health, but the lessons that we can get from that and that we can tell people about can perhaps be applied in general.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Okay. Just before Carole, the Deputy Chair, speaks, I'm going to put in my two cents. I'm going to be a real politician here and say I agree with everybody, but I think what we have to clarify — and just for the newer members — is we're not trying to emulate or copy what we've already done.

This is actually something different. It's not reviewing a report from the rep and then getting the ministry here tomorrow and asking questions. It's different.

It gives us an opportunity as a committee to do something different. So for everybody that mentioned, "I don't want to have a report just sitting there on the shelf going nowhere," it won't be like that. Our whole intent is for us to shape what we want to accomplish.

I think we've come more or less to an agreement on youth mental health and addiction. Obviously, as Maurine had said, we have to streamline it. What I would propose is that you go back to your caucus, I go back to my caucus, and then we get together and talk about our
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cauci — or whatever you want to call them. Then we could talk about….

Carole and I, after we've been informed by our respective cauci, could kind of put something together ourselves and think about who the panel members might be, if we want to streamline, what this topic…. It's all of the things that have been indicated in what the Clerk provided us with in the proposal for committee special projects, and educating ourselves on at least what the committee did the last time.

I think, given the fact that we're already over time, that this has been a good initial exercise. Why don't we just go back to our people? We'll talk and then — if you allow us to do this, after we've consulted with you guys — come back and maybe bring forward some suggestions to the Clerk. Then we can move forward on what we want to do. Obviously, it's not going to happen till the springtime, so we've got some time.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): I'm seeing nods. Do I see any shakes? No shakes; just nods.

The other thing on our agenda was any other business. We do have our committee meeting tomorrow. In addition to listening to the ministry, we do have another topic to discuss — how we were going to further getting a response from the ministry in various different avenues.

We still have that to discuss, as well as other business, but we're certainly open tomorrow, if something else comes up in the meantime, to put our other business in addition to that.

Other than that, I think the day has been quite good. We've accomplished a lot, and we'll accomplish equally a lot tomorrow, I have no doubt.

Unless anybody's got any questions, comments or concerns, we'll see you tomorrow. Motion to adjourn — Moira, Doug. We're done.

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Chair:	* Jane Thornthwaite (North Vancouver–Seymour BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	* Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal)
	* Mike Bernier (Peace River South BC Liberal)
	* Doug Donaldson (Stikine NDP)
	* Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt–Royal Roads NDP)
	* John Martin (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
	* Darryl Plecas (Abbotsford South BC Liberal)
	* Jennifer Rice (North Coast NDP)
	* Dr. Moira Stilwell (Vancouver-Langara BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Committee Staff:	Byron Plant (Committee Research Analyst)

Witnesses:	John Greschner (Deputy Representative for Children and Youth)
	Melanie Mark (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth)
	Bill Naughton (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth)
	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