Children and Youth — Issue No. 15 — Tuesday, February 24, 2015 (HTML)

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

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the February 6, 2015, correspondence to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth from the Representative for Children and Youth and Deputy Minister, Ministry of Children and Family Development regarding the statutory review of the monitoring function pursuant to the Representative for Children and Youth Act, Section 6(1)(b).

• Bill Naughton, Chief Investigator and Associate Deputy Representative, CID and Monitoring

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth Report: Not Fully Invested: A Follow-up Report on the Representative’s Past Recommendations to Help Vulnerable Children in B.C. (October 2014)

• Bill Naughton, Chief Investigator and Associate Deputy Representative, CID and Monitoring

4. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Office of the Representative for Children Youth Report: 2013/14 Annual Report and 2014/15–2015/16 Service Plan.

• Bill Naughton, Chief Investigator and Associate Deputy Representative, CID and Monitoring

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
Correspondence Regarding Statutory Review: Representative for Children and Youth Act	361
M. Turpel-Lafond
Representative for Children and Youth Report: Not Fully Invested: A Follow-Up Report on the Representative’s Past Recommendations to Help Vulnerable Children in B.C.	365
M. Turpel-Lafond
Office of the Representative for Children and Youth: Annual Report and Service Plan	371
M. Turpel-Lafond
Other Business	373

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I think we should start right now. Some people are going to be coming in a little bit late, but it would be good to get started because we’ve got just an hour and a half. My request to the presenters is if we could wrap it up at least ten minutes ahead of time, because the vice-Chair, myself and the Clerk need to deal with some scheduling issues. It would be very much appreciated if we could keep to the time allotted. Forgive me in advance for trying to rush things along.

Anyways, welcome, Mary Ellen, and your team to the committee. We have three items on the agenda today. One is to talk — briefly, I think — about the statutory review correspondence that you jointly presented with the ministry. The other is to deal with and receive the report: Not Fully Invested: A Follow-Up Report on the Representative’s Past Recommendations to Help Vulnerable Children in B.C. That came out in October 2014.

Then the third item is the consideration of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth annual report and service plan.

Are there any other issues that any of the committee members would like added to the agenda? Okay.

So then at fourth, other business — the Deputy Chair and myself will have a conversation about scheduling.

All right, without further ado, welcome, Mary Ellen. If you wanted to introduce your folks, and you could start off with item 1.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Good morning, members of the committee. I’m pleased to be here to meet with the committee to address the agenda before us. This, just to note for the record, is the 30th appearance before this committee. Not that I keep track of them, but in fact, I do.

Today I will be discussing the statutory review, the annual report and service plan and the report that was released, which was a status report on the recommendations of prior reports.

Before I get started I do want to introduce the staff, and most importantly, I want to take a moment to introduce you to the representative’s office new acting deputy representative, Dawn Thomas-Wightman. Dawn is to my left, your right. As members of the committee will know, there is a regulation that governs the competencies that we look for when we seek out and appoint an acting deputy or a deputy representative. I’m delighted that Dawn not only meets but exceeds these requirements.

She brings 20 years of direct experience in child welfare, particularly aboriginal child welfare. She’s had various roles with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and delegated agencies and in my office. She is a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, and she brings a very strong collaborative approach to leadership.

I’m extremely pleased that she’s taken on the responsibility as deputy. She’s taking over from John Greschner, who committee members know well. John is moving into a new position as executive lead for external relations and strategic direction at the RCY. This is an important part of the transition in our organization.

I hope committee members will take a moment, if you haven’t had a chance, to meet and discuss issues with Dawn. Please make sure you do so in the next few meetings.

Of course, I’m also joined today by Bill Naughton, who’s to my right, your left. Bill continues as the chief investigator for critical injuries and death investigations in my office and is also the associate deputy representative for that area and for the monitoring function in my office.

I’m pleased they’re here. Also, in the gallery joining us is Jeff Rud, who is the director of communications. I’m delighted that they’re here with me today.

Correspondence Regarding
Statutory Review: Representative for
Children and Youth Act

M. Turpel-Lafond: First item is the representative’s monitoring function. As the committee members know, on February 6, Mark Sieben, the deputy minister for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, and I wrote to the committee chairs with respect to the mandated review that the committee has under the Representative for Children and Youth Act requiring you to complete a review of the monitoring functions by April 1, 2015.

As committee members who have been longer serving on this committee will know, two years ago we did a comprehensive review through this committee of the Representative for Children and Youth Act and made a number of important recommendations, including that the mandate be expanded in some respects for the transition of special needs youth.

As part of that review, we looked at the monitoring function, and the committee heard extensively from a variety of presenters, including myself and then Deputy Minister Stephen Brown, in which it was recommended that the monitoring, audit and review function of the representative’s office be continued for at least two years. That was a bit of an understanding between myself and Stephen Brown, as head of the ministry at that time, acknowledging that that function would need to continue.

Again, I come back. The letter was submitted from myself and Mr. Sieben, because the view is that the mon-
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itoring function needs to continue. It is probably not a germane moment to do a comprehensive review. There will be a more comprehensive review at the next five-year mark, in 2017. We’re of the view that that will be valuable. However, we’re both of the view — and I’m glad this is a mutual understanding — that the monitoring and audit function and the review function are necessary and ongoing.

Again, to provide context to this, we know that the representative’s office and this function were created after Mr. Hughes did his child and youth review in 2006. Mr. Hughes was strong in 2006. In fact he appeared, as members will recall, two years ago when we reviewed this issue — took the view that it may not always be necessary to have an external body overseeing the functions of the child welfare system. There may in fact dawn a day, a glorious day, in British Columbia when that is no longer required. However, today is not that day, and Mr. Hughes appeared two years ago to say that. I think Mr. Sieben and I are of the view that today is not the day.

However, I think it is important to say that there has been some progress. It is not an entirely bleak story. There has been some progress with respect to the ministry improving some of its reporting. The ministry still lacks a comprehensive, tested and regular quality assurance process, particularly around its child safety functions.

As you know, the ministry has six lines of business, which were really redefined and restructured in 2010 to 2012. Around the public safety side, in particular, there are the beginnings of a quality assurance system. There’s a framework at times, but that has not been fully crystallized, implemented, and we haven’t seen the fruits of reporting on that regularly.

The representative’s office continues to push the ministry very strongly to land on that quality assurance program, report independently to the public regularly and use that information for improvement.

The ministry has produced four what it calls performance reports, but as the members of this committee will know, these are fairly thick tomes, very similar to what we used to see as the big fat phone book, much of which speaks to financial reporting, not actual outcomes for children or accountabilities for programs and services.

It’s still not used by the ministry to inform and improve service. It’s a valuable step. They’re in their fourth iteration. Very significant swaths of information are not included in the ministry’s reports at this point, such as comprehensive data on aboriginal children and families. There’s a lot of work remaining to be done. However, it does progress, perhaps at a glacial pace. But it does progress.

I think the important point to note for the committee is that the representative’s office and myself as representative have a very healthy and effective relationship with the senior executive of the Ministry of Children and Families. It wasn’t always that way. Certainly, over the last four years that has been very different and changed.

As representative I have a lot of confidence in the competency of the team. I also have a lot of enthusiasm about the fact that they too have engaged in some very important change, and they brought on some new associate deputy ministers. They will, I’m assured by them, continue to bring a new attitude and spirit toward meeting their mandate with a higher degree of commitment to results and effectiveness. But we are not there yet. That will take some time.

As committee members will know, as representative, my office has monitored different aspects of the child-serving system that really speak to some of its core functioning, such as the 2013 report that we produced, Much More than Paperwork, which looked at planning for children in care and which found an abysmal rate of compliance around planning for children in care. While we’re seeing that climb in some areas, it’s still fairly abysmal in many places and will require ongoing auditing and reviewing by our organization as an independent oversight body before we could be close to being able to withdraw from that.

Furthermore, as you know, we did a very significant 2014 report, Finding Forever Families, on adoption and identified some very systemic, ongoing difficulties around the discharge of the adoptions function by the ministry and the fact that there are more than 1,000 children eligible for adoption while the numbers of children adopted in B.C. have actually declined over the last decade. That was a valuable report, and in fact we’ve launched a very good joint strategy with the ministry to try and see those numbers improved.

Again, we will need to see if they get the results. They’ve set a target. I didn’t set their target. They set their target under a lot of urging and insistence, because we did a comprehensive, thorough review looking at six years of data and experience. They set a target. We will be reporting on whether they reach that target.

If they fail to reach that target, I think that will be a very significant flag that a fairly intense form of monitoring will go forward. Because it speaks to an issue of…. It is one thing to accept that change is needed, and it’s really valuable that everyone comes on the same page. It’s another thing to actually obtain results, and you have to obtain results for children. Those 1,000 children waiting for adoption need to be adopted and need to be supported.

The ministry set a target, as they will report on, of 300. My understanding at this point is we’re at 224, so I’m not sure that that target will be met. I’ll be looking at that very carefully. But it speaks to the issue before you, which is: while things move forward — at, perhaps, a slow pace — it is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal, so to speak, and remove oversight, including the auditing, monitoring and research function.
[ Page 363 ]

The other dynamic that I think it’s important to note, though…. Because we have a very strong and collaborative relationship with the ministry — and an appropriate relationship, of course, characterized at times by some necessary tension in terms of the relationship; that’s necessary and positive — it’s important to note that one of the areas we’re working on, which I think holds a lot of promise, is possibly a three- to five-year plan looking at the types of audit, review and oversight activities our office will conduct and some identification of some collaborative research activities with MCFD.

Being able to carve that out jointly is important. I’ve attempted to do that in the past, pretty much every year — attempted to find one or two joint areas that I could work with MCFD on to produce a result. I have to tell you, that has been a failed initiative every time, mostly because everything gets bogged down in MCFD and they can never get to a final product. Or, of course, they feel quite anxious and concerned when the results do not necessarily reflect positive results.

I think we’ve turned the corner on that. I think that we are back at the drawing board again, attempting to chart out a bit of a five-year plan for the research, monitoring and audit function as we have a deeper understanding of their quality assurance function. It would be my goal — of course, it’s a collaborative initiative — to be able to bring back to this committee, maybe at some point toward the end of this year or the beginning of next year, with the deputy minister, a bit of a view of what that would look like over a period of time, where we could maybe even have a bit of a consensus on it.

I’ve also tasked John Greschner with the responsibility to do a bit of a consultation in the child-serving sector, our child-serving organizations in British Columbia — to take that and look at that to get the views of those organizations as to whether or not they feel that the auditing, monitoring and research is as effective as it could be and is as accurate as it could be.

So there are a few activities underway. I would hope that by the time the committee was reseized with this item as part of the five-year statutory review by 2017, you would be in a good position to be able to see what that would look like for a period of time.

I’ll just stop there and open to any questions, Madam Chair. If you wish me to take the questions now or if you wish me to move on, I’m at your disposal.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Are there any questions from any of the committee members?

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Thanks again for this report, reporting out.

I want to ask you a question that I will ask of the ministry, as well, when they do their presentation. Section 30(2) of the act refers to the review, auditing and research requirements of your office as oversight on MCFD. My understanding is that your ability to carry out those functions would be directly connected to performance measures and performance reporting out by the ministry. On page 2 of the letter that you jointly signed with the deputy minister, at the top paragraph, it says that “considerable work is required to achieve the performance and outcomes reporting envisioned by the hon. Ted Hughes,” in April 2006.

In your perspective and opinion — 2006 was nine years ago — what has been the impediment to the ministry actually arriving at performance measures on the work that they do? It’s been nine years since the Hughes report. What has been the delay in getting these performance measures in place, from your perspective?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the challenge is a number of things, as committee members will know that this is a ministry that has gone through a great deal of change and a lot of executive-level makeovers. Since 2010 I think there has been a greater, sharper focus on the sort of ABCs of getting the foundations in place.

One of the challenges, as their most recent performance report speaks to, is the fact that we are still not able to speak with great confidence in British Columbia about there actually being a child welfare system. By system I mean a consistent approach to dealing with concerns around child safety in 12 service delivery areas and five regions — meaning the office in Williams Lake, the office in Prince Rupert, the office in Port Hardy and the office in Victoria will all be able to respond consistently and effectively to an intake.

So the child welfare system is definitely inconsistent, and the ministry certainly has owned up to that more strongly. I think the fact that they reported that quite explicitly may be difficult to interpret, because, as I say, it’s maybe page 600 in the phone book of 1,200 pages. But it’s clear that the practice is not stable, and the staff required to engage effectively in that progress is not adequate, not appropriately trained, organized and supported. Probably the primary reason is that disconnect between what I would call the executive-level makeovers, big-picture makeovers, and that reality on the ground.

Now, I’m much encouraged recently, which is why Deputy Minister Sieben and I were able to say there’s been some progress. There have been some good steps in the last number of years. Recently there have been some very good steps, such as…. A good working group was established at the urging of the representative of a group of representatives of the BCGEU and senior ministry officials, sitting down and talking about the offices where the child welfare and other work can’t get done.

That working group had a task, and it may be sunsetted. I’ve been urging the ministry and the senior leadership in the ministry and the minister to continue that. So that type of really focusing on why offices are not functioning
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and why the service isn’t out there — that’s the important piece of the work.

Until we can understand why we get results like we get…. Why would we get a report that says that plans of care aren’t happening? Well, it’s because really we don’t have staff that’s trained, equipped and able to do the work.

For a number of years in British Columbia the approach to child welfare was really sort of to blame and shame people, particularly people on the front line of the child welfare system. I think we’ve really changed the culture to one of understanding why systems don’t work.

I’m encouraged, also. This will be a very key part of our monitoring in the next short while. I’m very encouraged by the fact that the ministry has now acknowledged that there are some 530 FTEs that they need to bring into the child welfare system and to the child-serving system. That’s a massive undertaking. That is the underburn in the ministry of about 400 and another 130 staff. Even that is a recognition that wasn’t there just a few years ago.

Again, bringing in 530 staff — first of all, will they be able to find them? Will they be able to retain them, recruit them? This is an area, again, where the oversight and monitoring, how the ministry decides who it will hire and where they will put them and whether they will put them into the tasks where they’ve had serious shortfalls….

Your question is a good one. I think some of the challenges really relate to the fact that there may not have been a full acceptance of the depth of the problems in British Columbia. It’s sort of like normal in an organization that’s had a lot of trouble that when it first faces significant oversight, it just keeps doing what it’s always done. It takes a while to open up. It’s been a bit of time coming, but I like to think we’re at that time. My earlier comments really should prevail, which are: it’s one thing to admit you have an issue; it’s another thing to get results.

We’re all on the same page about the issues as a result of some of the auditing, monitoring and research that the representative’s office has done, but they have to be able to change that. Their accountability to change that is going to be the measure. We will see that, but that’s going to take at least two years, I would suggest to you, and probably five. There are many, many frailties.

C. James: Just a quick question. It follows up on the comments that you’ve made around accountability. I think it certainly is a positive sign — I’d add cautious optimism — that we’re seeing some changes. The letter came forward from both the ministry and your office as a representative.

I appreciate that we have a statutory requirement in 2017 to review the act. But I would hope — because I think that slow progress is being made — that the committee and, I’m presuming, the representative’s office as well as the ministry, will give us updates as we build toward 2017. I think the concern is that we don’t want to see a slide back. We’ve seen that. We’ve seen where things have started making progress, and then we haven’t had anything go forward.

I would certainly hope, and I’ll pass along to the ministry as well, that we’d see constant updates as we build towards 2017 and that this isn’t something that the committee will just let go until we get to 2017 and then say it’s time to do a statutory report. I think the follow-up is going to be critical, and it’s part of our responsibility as a committee as well.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think that would be extremely valuable. How I would suggest, in terms of making…. The role of this committee is so important with respect to this work. I think it was a key part of what was necessary in terms of oversight of the progress. I would certainly like to see some type of a presentation, ideally a joint presentation to this committee, on MCFD’s quality assurance program.

I do note that this committee previously received presentations on the ministry’s quality assurance visions — for instance, in 2009 — of proposals that never came to pass and that, in fact, never would come to pass. It’s very important that the information presented to this committee be realistic.

Certainly, that was a very difficult period, including for the oversight agency, because representatives can come forward and present whatever they like. But we knew full well that it would never come to pass, and it never did come to pass. It’s the dilemma of someone in an office in Victoria writing a high-level plan that sounds great and does a good job of convincing everybody in the moment versus one that will be meaningful, impactful and will make the type of change required.

I would like very much to support the ministry, to see them come forward and demonstrate to the committee the practicalness and the significance of a quality assurance plan and how they will use that information to improve practice and improve outcomes, particularly safety outcomes. That would be one hugely significant benchmark. Have that ability to move beyond what might be, for instance, a communications device to actually a deeper understanding of how this will represent a permanent and important improvement in child welfare in British Columbia.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you very much, Mary Ellen. Are there any other questions or comments from other committee members?

All right. Can we go into, then, the second agenda item, the report Not Fully Invested: A Follow-Up Report on the Representative’s Past Recommendations to Help Vulnerable Children in B.C.
[ Page 365 ]

Representative for Children
and Youth Report:
Not Fully Invested:
A Follow-Up Report on the
Representative’s Past Recommendations
to Help Vulnerable Children in B.C.

This is a report that I released on October 9 of last year. The report has considerable scope because it summarizes a six-year period of my office’s work and, more importantly, my assessment of government’s response to that work.

I note, again, that this report was sparked largely by members of this committee suggesting to myself as representative that it would be a very good opportunity to take stock and to present a bit more of an oversight view, a higher-level view of where the recommendations are and how the progress is. I think that was extremely valuable, and I appreciate that. This report is, really, the culmination of that suggestion.

Between 2008 and 2013 reports prepared by my office made 148 recommendations to improve the lives of children and youth in British Columbia. That spanned both detailed investigations into injuries and deaths of B.C. children as well as research, monitoring and auditing. Those reports addressed different sectors of the child-serving system and identified specific demographic groups who have been typically underserved.

These recommendations really were…. Although they sound significant, 148, they were pretty modest in scope and aimed at making actual improvements to improve life for young British Columbians. The report tracks and makes public government’s progress toward implementing those recs, and overall, 72 percent of the recommendations have been substantially or fully implemented.

While that may sound quite positive — many parents in British Columbia might be very happy if their child brought home a 72 percent result, but you’re not going to be getting into a lot of post-secondary and ongoing opportunities with that type of result — it’s not good enough, for two reasons.

First, we’re talking about recommendations that are, really, not optional. They’re mandatory to improve safety and well-being of some of British Columbia’s most vulnerable children and youth — for instance, being able to plan for children in care, being able to safely make sure that caregivers and others are adequately screened and providing safe refuge for children who are in the system.

Secondly, the recommendations on which the least amount of progress was made are some of the most significant. I think that really gets into some of the underlying or presenting challenges, which also speak not just to the Ministry of Children and Families but actually governmentwide challenges to address the conditions that families experience that make their children particularly vulnerable.

Public bodies, including MCFD, have been very willing to make change, we saw, to policy and procedure, the higher-level policy and procedure, which is great. The nine recommendations to government as a whole, the ones that require the greatest effort for a significant impact, have largely been ignored, although I was very delighted and congratulate the Chair on her appointment as Parliamentary Secretary for Child and Youth Mental Health. That was one of the big recommendations in terms of the Still Waiting report. We’re delighted that that has occurred, but there are key areas where we are struggling. I will just highlight them very briefly.

There are themes upon which there are significant and ongoing challenges. The first are the issues affecting vulnerable children and families because of child poverty and family poverty in British Columbia. Again, British Columbia has one of the highest child poverty rates. We do not have an accepted measure of poverty.

We have not landed on what British Columbia will embrace, whether it’s a market basket measure or whatever measure. Certainly, one doesn’t have to be an economist to know that tools like the Gini coefficient tell us that we’re heading toward pretty significant disparity in British Columbia, with some families very much at the bottom of the ladder and not climbing that ladder, by any means, and their children being deeply disadvantaged.

The suggestion for a child poverty strategy has been an ongoing one, targeting particularly vulnerable groups — like aboriginal poverty, where you’ve had deep, intergenerational poverty, not just transitional poverty due to the downturn or transitions in a particular industry or resource sector. Of course, many of the recommendations highlight that some of the strategies that the government has relied upon in the past, such as job creation, are not effective for those families in deep poverty and those children in deep poverty.

This report really speaks to the fact that we have not landed effectively on consistent measures to make sure that children in poverty do not, because of that poverty, end up just coming into care as opposed to their families being supported to be able to meet their needs. Far too often we see that challenge.

On the mental health area, another big area, I think it’s fair to say that government has failed to take much action on the issue of youth mental health. Again, I applaud the appointment of the Chair of this committee. It’s a good step. However, in terms of improving the available services that are in the child and youth mental health system, there has been a limited, limited increase. For instance, there was an announcement not too long ago that one bed would be added to the adolescent unit at Ledger House, which is here on Vancouver Island — one bed.
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I think we need to know that there may be a four- to five-month wait-list for that one bed, even before it was created. Not to mention, in some instances in the child and youth mental health system, 12- to 18-month wait-lists continue, where children are parked in that system without progress. So there has not been an enhancement of additional services in that system.

I appreciate that there have been some efforts to look at how to navigate that to get into the door of that system, but navigating in the door, while extremely valuable, can have sort of a snakes-and-ladders effect. You get in the door, and then you fall down to the bottom of a wait-list, where you will wait for 12 months for service.

Despite the fact that, for instance, the Ministry of Children and Family Development has reassessed the way it deals with who’s on that wait-list and how they’re categorized — they have a new category system — I think our dealings with the front line of the child and youth mental health system reinforce for us that every child in those categories has urgent needs that are being unmet as they sit parked on a wait-list with uncertainty around the wait times for service.

The mental health area continues to be a massively significant area. Again, I’m hoping that with the new lead, that will have more focus and attention and there can be some improvement. But at this point, we’re still seeing very significant human costs in terms of the lives of children and families and huge financial costs for the lives of parents and families who really have challenges to get services for their children and also find it difficult to work and difficult to meet the needs of their children while they sit parked on those wait-lists.

Another large theme in terms of where we haven’t seen progress is with respect to aboriginal children and youth. The continued overrepresentation of aboriginal children and youth — they’re, of course, only 8 percent of the total population but more than half of the children-in-care population — is not being addressed with enough urgency. I’ve repeatedly referred to this as a crisis.

As the committee will know, I did a very comprehensive report on how government in the past decade has set a priority in this area and engaged in a set of discussions with aboriginal leaders and their advisers. But that process — which was about, again, a high-level vision of change — was a fairly expensive and time-consuming process that did not lead to a result. Some $66 million was spent discussing issues without children being served, and the system wasn’t changed.

I was very much suggesting that a new approach needs to be adopted. The Ministry of Children and Family Development does not have a new aboriginal child and family service framework and has made very limited progress on addressing the recommendations in that report.

I note again, just as an example, that the recent performance report the ministry put out speaks to the fact that an aboriginal child in care whose care is within the guardianship of the staff of MCFD is 20 times more likely to be adopted than an aboriginal child in care of a delegated aboriginal agency. Yet the ministry strategy is to continue to put aboriginal children in the care of delegated aboriginal agencies. But they’re not getting the work done. Why they’re not getting the work done is not being sufficiently worked on.

It’s really a challenge where you’re making decisions and making children more vulnerable to drifting through foster care than addressing the issue. I’m not confident that the ministry has actually landed on this issue effectively, has taken it seriously. I’m also deeply disappointed that the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General side has not developed a new policy for how to negotiate child welfare jurisdiction. If that is the wish and will of leadership, there need to be some clear parameters. That has not come forward.

With respect to the work on adoptions and permanency, we do not have sufficient progress with respect to allowing aboriginal families the scope to have customary adoption. For instance, if aboriginal children…. Post-adoption support is not extended to them in terms of on-reserve adoption, and we continue to see major barriers and limits to progress in that area for children.

While we hear a lot of discussion — and we’ve heard a significant amount of discussion after the Tsilhqot’in decision about how there’s going to be a new framework and approach, and that may address issues around land title and resources — on the issues of children and families, we’re far from getting to a place where we should be. We need to see much, much more effective effort brought to the table.

The other broad area is the area of domestic violence. Again, there was initially a domestic violence plan. There’s been a new violence plan that was launched just recently. Of course, this report doesn’t look at that. Again, these are primarily high-level plans. They’re valuable, and I certainly would say that the more recent report on a violence-free B.C. was welcome. I was really delighted to see the effort and focus on prevention, including at the highest levels of the government in British Columbia. That’s a welcome and positive sign.

Prevention is extremely important — and opening a willingness to deal with not only domestic violence but sexual violence, so developing a sexual assault policy. One would hope we would have in British Columbia a pretty nuanced sexual assault policy, but I appreciate that the government is committed to developing one.

Unfortunately, in that recent announcement there are some 40 activities listed, which is valuable. However, it’s unclear to whom the assigned responsibilities are and the timelines for some of those changes. Of course, also, there’s been a valuable blue-ribbon panel on crime prevention. That’s been extremely valuable, as well, to look
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at the domestic violence issues and the opportunity for improvement.

We’ve seen some, as I say, attention and focus on prevention. We’re still not identifying the types of outcomes that we need to see change around: keeping victims connected, supporting victims as they transition out of relationships of violence into safety.

My deputy and I were able to meet and sit and talk to people who work very closely with victims of domestic violence just about a week ago — I’d say one of the most important resources we have in terms of a transition resource in British Columbia. The staff spoke to us in very specific terms about how many of the women that come through the transition and shelter system simply can’t see themselves living independently on social assistance and meeting the needs of their children.

They can’t navigate that system because it’s not working for them. They’re not getting the exceptions that they are supposed to get to be able to get supported immediately. They’re still facing wait times. The families and their children are very discouraged and tend, then, to return to relationships of violence that put them at great risk.

The shelter staff, in particular, were talking about how they continue to struggle to work with police and the Ministry of Children and Families to see an integrated approach that actually supports, particularly, moms as they try and get a safety plan that will be an effective safety plan but also what I would call not even a safety plan. Let’s call it a survival plan — that you can actually live somewhere safely, pay the rent and see a way that you’ll be able to meet the needs of your child without being pretty much completely eroded.

That goes back to the poverty issues. We continue at the front line to see that pretty significant disconnect between the high-level domestic violence plans and the lived reality of women escaping relationships of violence with their children.

In terms of the report’s recommendations. Of course, we’ve made no recommendations in this report because we really gave examples of where things are. If you go to page 19, you can see the sort of summary around where things are, the two kinds of tickers, if you like, around how the ministry and how government have done.

There’s been, as I say, some significant progress, but there’s much work yet to be done. We are continuing to monitor these recommendations. This is not the end of the line, if you like. We are continuing to monitor them, and of course, the difficult challenge is that when you make a set of recommendations like….

For instance, in domestic violence. My office reported on the homicide of Christian Lee. My office reported on the homicide of Kaitlynne, Max and Cordon, the Schoenborn children. And my office will probably report again on domestic violence homicides after having a historic year where there were 17 in 2014.

We see a pattern to the recommendations that come from our office. We see some uptake, but we see only limited uptake. Of course, government doesn’t have to adopt the recommendations of the representative’s office. But I think it’s important if, on the day the report is released, the government says it adopts the recommendations and then we come back a year later and they have strayed from that, we have an explanation as to why.

Part of the responsibility with my office is to actually say: “Well, why did you drop that?” That can become a fairly uncomfortable discussion, because, like: “Well, we didn’t really drop it but whatever.” It’s a longer-term perspective that’s needed.

On the issues of domestic violence in particular, I use that as an example to say you’ll likely be seeing again from my office some of the very same recommendations that we’ve made in the past until we can see some actual progress, such as having an effective enforcement of the Family Law Act in British Columbia, where women can get access to protective orders that are served by the police and enforced by the police and that we get a better understanding of some of the outcomes and we can see some improvements there as to whether or not that is working.

On issues such as effective monitoring of individuals who pose a significant risk to their former partner or their children while they are out on bail or in the community, that will require some innovations like electronic monitoring and so forth and improvements in the justice system — improvements that we’re still waiting for some six years. Those are really very significant.

I appreciate that some of those improvements were reinforced again in, for instance, the blue-ribbon panel on crime prevention and highlighted in the recent violence-free framework as tasks to be undertaken. But they’re not tasks yet completed, where we actually have in place in British Columbia effective electronic monitoring or an effective protective order system.

We continue to really struggle in this area. I would say that I remain a little bit unsure today as to where the lead is on domestic violence and violence prevention. The Ministry of Children and Families does have a provincial office of domestic violence. Yet the recent strategies that have come out have not really highlighted them as a lead. I’m quite unsure around who has the leadership and what their accountabilities will be. We’ll look at that.

With respect to the unrealized recommendations, if you like, I would like to certainly say that the issues around the type of reporting that I would like to see, again…. When we see multiple ministries, this is where we really see a challenge.

I’ll come back to the mental health issue just for one more moment; that is, I know this committee has done valuable work in its interim report on mental health. I know you have ongoing engagements to maybe go toward a final report. I certainly welcome that. I think that’s extremely helpful.
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Just on some issues like assessing the number of acute care beds for transition-age youth in B.C. What is the number on any given day? Where are they? Why do we have beds that appear to sit empty, yet we have very long waiting lists — to understand that. We all know that these are challenging issues, but saying that is not good enough.

The response isn’t to say: “Well, this is challenging because we have two ministries and we have health authorities and we have the PHSA and we have a whole variety of people we have to work with.” Okay, fine. We know that. That’s our service delivery system. But we still have to fix it, and we still have to address it. We have to make it work for the people that it has to serve and not make it work for the chopped-up nature of the system.

That just comes back to that issue of…. I see far, far too much inertia in the system when it comes to divided accountabilities and the need to bring a stronger single focus to outcomes. I have seen progress where there is that commitment to find that strong single focus. We can see movement. But in the mental health area….

I’m delighted the committee is continuing to engage in it, because it’s one where, on a daily basis, it’s very, very challenging. Many children and young people continue to be placed in what I would call inappropriate placements that in the end will pose significant harm to their development and well-being, like in a forensic unit instead of in a proper therapeutic setting.

These are issues which I anticipate I’ll have to continue to report on and I’ll likely have to continue to make recommendations on until we can see some significant movement there.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Mary Ellen, can I just interject here, noting the time. We probably do have questions from the members on this particular report, and then we’ve got the other one to go through, all within a period of about a half an hour.

I thought maybe what I would do is just interject and ask folks…. I actually do have a question, if nobody else has one. Maybe this might prompt questions.

My question is…. You had mentioned earlier, when you were talking about aboriginal children and the issue of delegated aboriginal agencies not doing the work…. You’re suggesting that the ministry or government find out why. I’m wondering what your suggestions are on that particular issue.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I made a detailed set of recommendations in my report on When Talk Trumped Service. It was a detailed recommendation — I believe it was recommendation 2 — that actually dealt with the competencies of the staff and supporting the staff.

For instance, when I said earlier about the adoption issue…. You’re 20 times more likely to be adopted if you’re in MCFD care than in delegated agency care. Why? There’s not — and Dawn will have to correct me if I’m wrong — a single delegated adoption worker that’s actually on the job in the 23 delegated agencies. If you don’t have any qualified staff and the ministry isn’t working to get the staff to do the job, well, they’re not going to be doing the job.

There are other challenges that exist in delegated agencies. I think the report speaks to them. I think my recommendation had about 15 sub-recommendations that I wanted to see progress on pretty quickly. The ministry has failed to make that progress. There’s no way around it.

There has been some improvement. The delegated agencies have come together. I’m working very closely with them. In fact, I’m sponsoring, with them and the ministry, a forum on adoption in April in Nanaimo, where we’re really going to talk about how we are going to break this to get results. I’m doing that, in part, because the ministry has not made progress.

On the delegated aboriginal agency piece, I think there are a lot of challenges yet for the ministry to really own that. I think it speaks to the history of how the ministry’s addressed aboriginal issues generally, which is: “Let’s create and support a delegated agency. Then let’s get the mandate out of here and let someone else take responsibility.” Yet the work doesn’t always get done. So what happens?

Some of the difficult conversations that are needed…. Last week my deputy and I met with one of the chairs of one of the delegated agencies and had a detailed discussion about the practice in that agency — a positive, healthy, good discussion about what’s happening for kids and what’s not happening. It was very, very good. She commented at the end of that: “Why do we never talk to the ministry like this? Why does the ministry not engage us at this level and talk to us about what the challenges are?” Instead, they sometimes sit on the results and don’t engage. That’s really crucial, because I think we need to change that.

Those recommendations stood on that point. But there has to be a change in policy from the passing of the responsibility off to somebody, who may be in a pretty fragile agency, to deal with the most vulnerable kids to actually collaborative practice, where you work together.

I think some of you may have followed with some interest, for instance, the recent coverage of issues that happened at the healing lodge in the Fraser, where the government spent $5 million or $6 million to create a resource where children would live and then spent multiple tens of thousands of dollars over years for maybe ten or 11 kids to live there.

Kids were harmed at that resource. The ministry wouldn’t even place its own children at that resource, yet it paid for someone else to have it, and staff weren’t necessarily qualified and so on. Then something really awful happened there. A girl was sexually assaulted there. She was harmed at the healing lodge funded by the Ministry
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of Children and Family Development and the government of B.C.

Why did that happen? It happened because people thought they were creating something valuable, but they didn’t think about whether or not there were qualified staff and a good, collaborative system and the ability to meet standards. So there has to be a very different conversation that happens.

The ministry is not there yet. One of my recommendations was that they have a senior leader, an ADM-level leader, and they still don’t have that leadership either. I continue to point that out to them, continue to push, to the extent that I can, but I have to say they’re not getting there. They’ve got a lot of work to do.

J. Martin: Thank you, Mary Ellen, as always. If you could just clarify one thing that I wasn’t quite following. You particularly noted the Ministry of Justice on the issue of jurisdiction and aboriginal adoption. The connection was left…. If you can just clarify. I missed a little bit there.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. My report on When Talk Trumped Service looked at aboriginal policy. The first recommendation was this. There was a lot of confusion in British Columbia. There was leadership in the Ministry for Children and Families for a number of years that said to the 200-plus bands, tribal councils and others: “You can run your own child welfare system. Just design it however you like, and we’ll fund it.” Well, that didn’t have a basis of a policy — for instance, based on what you would negotiate and how you would do that.

To assume jurisdiction over child welfare…. First Nations can do that if they wish to do that. They have legal rights to do that. But we need a policy to negotiate that. When does this system end and this system begin, and how do they work together? These are very significant issues, like we have with education, health or other things.

In the child welfare area the Ministry for Children and Families just sort of announced it without getting legal advice from Justice and setting in place a proper process. As a result, millions of dollars were spent, with divergent expectations. Some communities felt they could design whatever they want. Someone would pay for all of their concept, and they would run it their way, if you like. No one ever sat down and worked through this.

To say “divergent” is an understatement. It was a disaster. A complete disaster occurred, and as a result, there were a lot of misunderstandings. When you raise enormous expectations that you could never possibly meet, one branch of government versus the other, it ends badly. And that ended badly. So one of the recommendations was: please clearly set out the pathway for jurisdiction — what the government is prepared to negotiate, what the government is prepared to pay and issues like economy of scale. You know — will we have 200 child welfare jurisdictions, or will there be 40? How will we work this?

Since my report recommendations were made, the government has not released the policy. The department of Justice has not landed on it. So I’ve met consistently with them. I’ve asked them about their progress. There’s no progress.

With the Supreme Court of Canada decision with the Tsilhqot’in, there was a consideration that maybe they’d reconsider it. Of course, it had nothing to do with child welfare. Child welfare jurisdiction already existed. So I think the government is in a bit of a spot. They need to say what they think because there are those sectors in the First Nations community that say very strongly they want jurisdiction, and they want to negotiate it.

So yes or no, yea or nay. Get the policy out there and start going one way or the other. The worst thing is if someone just assumes it and the kids have no service. We continue to be spinning on that issue in British Columbia.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I have two questions, quickly — one specific and one much more general, an overview.

On page 35, in the conclusion — this is the specific one — the report says your “office plans to conduct a review of MCFD staffing levels in the coming months.” That was October, so I’d be interested in knowing where that review of staffing levels is at.

The second question is a large question. In the report the words “leadership” or “lack of leadership” are mentioned throughout. I attended the public meeting where you unveiled this report in October, and you were highlighting leadership there again.

My question is more…. Generally, what does leadership look like? What’s lacking now to address those four areas that are highlighted in your report: child poverty, a child in situations of domestic violence, children and youth mental health challenges and vulnerable aboriginal children and youth? What, in your view, would the leadership that is lacking look like?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, first of all, on the staffing report. Yes, my staff have been extremely active and have attended to 17 separate offices of the Ministry for Children and Families and, basically, have done a bit of an audit of intake. We will be reporting out on that and certainly have been sharing some of the findings of that process with the ministry’s senior leadership and have been engaged very positively with the front-line staff in those 17 offices and, again, have seen in, I would say, even the offices that have a full complement of FTEs, full-time employees, there that they are challenged to meet the mandate that they have.

Many of those offices are not dealing with a full complement. They’ve been understaffed for some time. On
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that issue we will be reporting, but there are some very serious issues. I welcome the recent budget that indicated there would be a slight uptick in MCFD’s budget and part of that would be dedicated to new staff. It’s really crucial that that happens.

That may not be a complete answer to what we find, but we will be sharing that. We’ve found, certainly, some serious concerns about some children left in unsafe situations because of the fact that the staff in the office can’t do the work. It’s not that they’re not capable of doing the work, but they can’t possibly and humanly do the work put before them with what they’ve got. You’ll see more from my office on that. I’m very engaged with the ministry behind the scenes to discuss that.

The ministry has a business redesign, if you like, or reset, and I welcome much of that discussion. I just want to make sure it really connects with what I’m interested in. Again, it comes back to that point. You’re going to hire 530 new people. I hope they’re going to be front-line people — they’re not going to be senior managers — because we need the front-line staff. We might need some managers too — no offence. But we actually really need front-line staff.

You want to definitely make sure that the GEU components that are relevant are engaged in that process and that you’re hearing what people say when they say: “I can’t get the job done” or “I can’t go out and see someone because I’m afraid, and I can’t go alone.” These things need to be taken seriously long before they get into reports from my office. You’ll hear more on that.

On the broader issue, I’m not sure if I have the time today to really talk about what leadership is required. I think the biggest thing, harking back to my comments earlier on adoption, as an example, is that leadership is about results. Leadership is about seeing the problem, knowing what it is and then getting the results, and when you don’t get the results, figuring out why not and getting them. It’s very simple. That’s the executive leadership, administrative leadership. That’s got to happen, because the four- or six-year-old kid is not going to get themselves adopted, are they? We’ve got to get it done. We cannot make excuses.

When a report like the one on adoption we did comes out and says you need to make fundamental change…. If you don’t make fundamental change, guess what happens. You don’t get the results. I think that that’s the hard issue. It’s very hard to back-pedal on results, and this is where we need it. At the same time, high-five and celebrate it when we make the progress. Let’s celebrate it. It’s good progress.

C. James: Just a quick question that comes back to our earlier discussion around accountability and work with the ministry. In discussing recommendations previously, I think we’ve talked about and we’ve heard from your office that sometimes there are disagreements about the recommendations that come forward from the representative’s office. The ministry may decide that there’s another way that they’re meeting it, or it’s a recommendation they don’t agree with.

I think the key, and certainly the key for this committee, is making sure that we hear that information back. If they haven’t done a recommendation, why not? What is the difference of opinion, and what is the different direction that they may be taking?

I wondered if you could just speak to…. You mentioned the improvement in the working relationship around looking at measures and looking at progress. Do you feel there’s been, as well, some movement around an acknowledgment of the recommendations and a tracking from the ministry’s point of view of your recommendations — why they haven’t been in place, and what progress is being made?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think there has been. I think we’re in a fairly positive position. I think we’ve seen it wax and wane. I think initially the view was that this is a ministry that could turtle, to just say: “Well, we’ve already been criticized for everything. That’s what child welfare is like, so we really don’t care what you say. We really don’t care what you recommend. We’re going to do whatever we want to do, because we’ve got the answers.”

There was a very strong element of arrogance — I would say, like many bureaucracies under great stress, hugely thin-skinned. That’s understandable because it’s really hard work. I appreciate that. But very thin-skinned and, unfortunately, therefore very rigid. That has changed, and the culture is changing slowly. It has changed to one of saying: “Okay, we welcome this. We look at it.” Certainly, it’s one source. We’re not the only agency that might make a recommendation. They have their own internal assessment.

I think the challenge, though, is to see that they have public responsibility to be accountable. If you wish to not do the recommendation — for instance, if you decide you’re not going to do plans of care for children in care — then amend the statute. Take it out. Take the policy and change it. Take the standard and change it. But you can’t just, off the side of your desk, decide you just won’t do it for a region. This is what accountability is about, right? You have to come forward and deal with it appropriately.

In the past they’ve had this sort of: “Well, we just can’t get it done.” Well, that’s not acceptable. That’s why oversight is needed, I think. Most of the recommendations from my office are not…. If anything, looking back at the 148 recommendations over the years, we’ve been very modest in the recommendations — very modest and always focused on what could be achieved.

We’ll recommend big things, like that we need a child poverty plan in B.C. I’m not saying end poverty. I’d like us to end poverty, but I’m not so naive as to think that a
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recommendation from my office will lead to that result. But having a plan to come to grips with the impacts of poverty on children in places and how we ameliorate that through appropriate services is really significant, right? So it’s the tone and the focus.

On the ministry’s core functions, where it has legislative and other accountabilities, I think we have some very good dialogues today, better than we did before. At the same time, when the pressure builds on results, it’s very easy in a government and an administration to do what they always do, which is that you fire someone and replace them with someone else and give them the fresh start. We need some stability; we need some focus.

I’m very grateful for the fact that we have some stability. Some new people are needed, and they need to get those results. We need to have them hang around long enough to get the results and be responsible for that.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Okay, seeing no other questions or comments, thank you very much, Mary Ellen. Now we will get you to jump into the last item, which is the annual report and the service plan, recognizing that we’ve got about 15 minutes.

Office of the Representative
for Children and Youth:
Annual Report and Service Plan

M. Turpel-Lafond: I’ll really abbreviate this area because, again, the service plan is an area where it’s been before you for some time so that you would have a chance to review it. We’ve also used it as the basis for a budget and been before the Finance Committee and received approval for that budget. So this is a work in progress. The train has left the station, and it’s underway.

This is our third combined report where we do our annual report and our service plan together. I’m really delighted with that format. We’re going to continue to use that format.

Again, I just highlight at a very high level. We have very strong performance measures around how we function as an office, including relevance, responsiveness, accountability and excellence. I won’t go into a lot of detail about how we meet and measure that, but we do put significant energy into that.

It’s really important, again — I can’t say this often enough — when I think about the work at the representative’s office, the extremely important and valuable work that the staff in the representative’s office undertake…. It’s an office of under 50 people in three locations dealing with extremely difficult material and complex situations.

I am just so pleased by the quality and skill of the staff, their ability to work as a team, their ability and consistent courage not to shy away from some of the most vexing issues — like we’ve discussed here today — and to try and make a positive contribution. None of this work would be possible without the excellent staff, so I’m so grateful for that.

We always manage the issue that staff can come into the RCY and they move on, frequently, to bigger opportunities, and that’s great. We’re really grateful for their extremely valuable work — especially, I would say, the advocacy staff.

They frequently, I would say, deal with a huge amount of distress because they’re trying to find a result for an urgent need, and it isn’t always easy to find that result. So it’s really important that they problem-solve but also work to prevent burnout and stress in that role, because these types of functions are so challenging. I’m really proud of the work that the staff does in that area.

In the area of critical injury and deaths we again, under Bill’s capable leadership, continue to perform, I think, a very good investigative reporting role — very highly capable investigations; well-organized, well-trained staff that are able to look at situations and decide what to go forward with.

Like any oversight agency or investigative body, we have a limited budget, so we can’t investigate everything. We have to be very careful about what we choose to investigate, and we continue to push and urge, for instance, the Coroners Service and others to play a role to help us, to give their lens and their support, to look at situations.

In terms of the audit and evaluation piece, you will see some of the products of this service plan fairly soon, as we release the next version of Growing Up in B.C., which we’re pretty close to completing now, and a number of other key reports, like the reviewing of the functioning of staff in particular offices.

The expansion of the advocacy mandate has been quite important, and we continue to work on the transition of young people with special needs.

We did request one additional designation of a service that we anticipated we would be working on this year. I’ve spoken to the committee about this before, so I’ll just note back to the committee that my request was declined by the Minister of Justice for B.C. I had requested that there be a designation that the liquor regulation area, particularly the issue of minors’ access to liquor, be within the purview of the representative’s office so we could look at whether there’s effective regulation.

That really comes out of the excellent work that’s been done in critical injury and death reviews, where we see how many minors have access to alcohol and drugs, but alcohol primarily, which they obtain through adults providing it for them or them getting it directly.

I did request that designation. I still have powers to look at this in some special reports. But I did request a very specific designation so someone in British Columbia could be looking at the regulation and access of minors to alcohol, particularly as we relax the standards and the accessibility — key things like that children can be brought
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to bars with their parents up to a certain time.

What happens in that place in British Columbia, where you know it’s happening and has already happened, where the parent or caregiver is intoxicated and there’s a child there? What does the staff do? Have they had any new training on how to deal with children? Do they call the Ministry of Children and Families, or do they just send them on their way with the child, intoxicated?

This is why we were very interested in playing some type of a role to look at it, but the Deputy Minister of Justice has now written back to me to decline that request. So I just make that known to the committee because I know that there was some concern there. That will not be happening this year, and it probably won’t be happening until that changes, and perhaps that will be something that will be looked at in 2017.

That gives you a bit of an idea of the work. Again, on the aboriginal services side, obviously a very significant focus of my office is in that. I spoke a bit earlier about the adoptions work. We also have just about completed a tour of all delegated aboriginal agencies with our advocacy team, which is important. Ongoing support to aboriginal stakeholders is important.

All of our staff has undertaken the indigenous cultural competency training that the PHSA hosts, and we will be doing some ongoing aboriginal competency training. Of course, we have a diverse set of staff, including a large contingent who are aboriginal and have special competencies in understanding the challenges of aboriginal families. We’re going to continue to work with a number of our key partners there.

The other area I would speak to is just the issues around our engagement with CLBC — very positive engagements with CLBC in recent years. We really welcome that very strong, effective working relationship. CLBC, in terms of dealing with the new classifications of youth that will be eligible for services…. They may not have met the old eligibility requirements, but we have sort of the new category. There’s a lot of important work happening there.

We’re advocating on a case-by-case basis. We may need to look a little bit more deeply at whether or not that’s working. For instance, some of the residential supports that those young people have may be working or may not be working. We’ve been looking at that as a pattern.

This is where you have individual advocacy, and you begin to see systemic concerns. We’re now at the point where we’re seeing some of the systemic challenges and thinking about how we might be able to report and work on those. This will be a very important year to gather information on that front.

I will leave it there, just to say that an area that we hope to have an emphasis on this year and perhaps in future years, leading to a review of the statute in 2017, is how we can enhance and strengthen and build a stronger youth engagement aspect. We do have significant youth engagement on every report we do, but it might be an area where we want to build in a stronger, regular youth engagement plan and program that would be funded and supported.

We do see examples of that elsewhere, which I think are quite valuable. We’re thinking about that a bit and doing more of that. I think it will be something to consider for the future because it is quite important that young people inform the services and that if the ministries are not using the feedback from young people, we find another way to engage them, to link them in, to prevent the disconnects that might happen.

C. James: Not a question, more a comment — to say thank you to you and your staff, to echo the words of the Finance Committee, where everyone was extraordinarily impressed with both the budget, the staff and the amount of work that gets done in a year. So just to express our appreciation, to be passed on to all of your staff as well, for the amazing job. I think children are well served in this province by your office. Thank you.

M. Karagianis: Mary Ellen, your comments about the denial of the Justice Ministry to give you some oversight of the new liquor act and the implications. I’m wondering if you’ve had a discussion with the coroner’s office about specific reporting on this. I mean, certainly it will be critical over the coming couple of years of new liquor standards to review incidents that occur out of abuse of alcohol, especially pertaining to children.

Is it something you would see maybe you and the coroner talking about if you don’t have specific authorization to look into that? I would be curious to see how it’s monitored in circumstances where children are at risk or death is a result of increased use and freedom of alcohol. When the liquor changes were first proposed, I know you made comment on that.

I was particularly interested in that idea that not all children’s experience will be in some upscale pub in Oak Bay where they have a family dinner and a glass of wine. Others will be certainly much more extreme. Children will be learning behaviours in a different way than we are used to here in our culture. I’m curious as to how that piece might be covered off and what other options might be available.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I have some deep concerns about this area because of the work of the coroner and our office — seeing the injuries and deaths of children, including abuse of children, where problematic substance abuse and alcohol use is very directly correlated with those outcomes. I’m not entirely certain that there was a good system of regulation before we introduced deregulation and, now that we’ve gone down the road of deregulation and increasing access, what will happen.

For instance, in British Columbia we do have a minors as agents program. It appears to be an extremely small,
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modest program with limited reporting compared to, for instance, what we see in other jurisdictions where you actually report place by place. So if there’s an off-sale in a certain town, we know what happened when the minor as agent went into that off-sale. You actually report place by place, with a pretty robust program. That’s just one aspect, right? But in any event, you would like to see that.

I would like to know why it is in certain places that minors seem to have easy access, and adults boot for them or they go in and get them themselves. We certainly see a pattern. When you look at the reporting on liquor regulation in B.C. that is available, which is extremely scant, almost all of the infractions reported are about minors and serving minors in licensed establishments. While minors are obtaining alcohol in all kinds of other ways too, and when we have proliferation of availability of the marketing and so forth, it’s there. Maybe there’s pricing and whatever, although I’m not sure that’s correlated.

Dr. Perry Kendall and I were both very strong with government, saying that there has to be evidence to support this, and there needs to be appropriate regulatory responses. I haven’t seen the regulatory response. Maybe it will be fantastic. I haven’t seen it rolled out, but I’ve see the deregulation rolled out, so I’m very concerned about the impact on young people.

We’ve also had the issue in British Columbia of party buses. I know there’s some legislation that the opposition has tabled — Mr. Heyman in particular. I am concerned about the fact that there are venues where children appear to correlate those venues with extremely problematic consumption of alcohol. Someone’s operating that, and someone’s providing the alcohol. None of those individuals are over the age of 19, so how does that work?

Again, this is the challenge of, on the one hand, do we simply turn a blind eye to what we know is an extremely harmful practice that’s occurring in our province, or are we focusing on how we can prevent and regulate it?

I think we need to be realistic. One of the reasons why I wanted the designation was to be able to have a peek and see if I could support the government to maybe look at that. I regret that it’s turned down, and I certainly don’t feel very confident, just from the outsider’s view, that there’s a system in place.

I do have special powers to report on the hundreds of instances where I’ve had young people harmed because of alcohol. But I’m not sure we’re really working together to look about the impact on adolescents and problematic drinking — not to mention the adults with problematic drinking. There is 20 percent of the population that have problematic drinking. Deregulation is not going to suddenly address their problematic drinking.

Again, these are serious, serious issues around the health and welfare of children. You can have the most prudent parents in any place in British Columbia, but if their child can easily obtain alcohol anywhere at any time, something very harmful can happen to an underage person. I think we need to provide some assurance to all families that we have good regulation.

I certainly don’t feel comfortable about that, which is why I’ve pushed it consistently. I was disappointed that it took the Minister of Justice and the ministry over a year to reply, but they finally did reply and reject it.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Seeing no other questions or comments, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, Mary Ellen, very much for coming in and giving us an update on those reports.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We have just a couple of items to go over in our committee before we end the meeting. One of the things is to hand out “Darkness Invisible: The Hidden Global Costs of Mental Illness.” Moira, you passed this on to us?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): On behalf of Moira Stilwell, I will circulate an article now from Foreign Affairs magazine, from the January 2015 issue. It’s called: “Darkness Invisible: The Hidden Global Costs of Mental Illness.” It’s an article which examines the direct and indirect economic impact of mental illness worldwide.

The other thing that Kate has provided that we will hand out is a preliminary list of some of the suggested witnesses — basically, the ones that we discussed last meeting, and others had given us a list. I know, Doug, you have a list of people as well.

I thought we’d just hand this out so everybody can take a look at it. Then Byron, perhaps, could work with myself and the Deputy Chair on targeting the questions, which may help to inform us on this. But take a look at it anyways.

Then maybe, Doug, if you could provide us with your list, we could distribute that as well — and if anybody else has any suggestions, because this was kind of a combination of what we discussed as well as Moira had provided us with additional people as well.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, that’s correct, Madam Chair — Wednesday, March 4, from 8 a.m. until 12 noon. We have extended an invitation to the
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Ministry of Children and Family Development to appear before you, but other details of the agenda have not yet been finalized. If there are any other items of business that you’d wish to add to that agenda, we can certainly accommodate any suggestions.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We will discuss the questions and the suggested people that we would like to come in for witnesses. But one thing I would ask, given that our next meeting is March 4…. Last time I mentioned the possibility of having Dr. Peterson and Dr. Morrison from the University of New Brunswick present. They have expressed some interest in actually physically being here. If we are going to physically get them here, we should probably book them.

If they can’t physically come here, then that’s fine. We can do it by teleconference or whatever. I just wanted to ask the committee if you were okay with us working with the Clerk and scheduling to see if we could secure a date, if in fact we can get them physically here to come and present on the New Brunswick model of child and youth mental health services in schools.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Are they able to travel here on their own budget, or is that something the committee would be…?

The last thing that we want to talk about, the dates. I recognize that, at least during session, Fridays are not that popular, because obviously, you want to be back in your constituencies and people have other meetings, etc. I would only throw out that if we possibly could have one Friday, that would be great, but we’ll go back and forth with Doug on that one.

I’m okay with these morning meetings. An hour and a half is a good chunk of time.

C. James: At our next meeting, when you bring back the questions for us to take a look at so that we can look at this, can we also bring back the process for how we’re going to make sure that we put out a call for people as well and have that discussion too, just to make sure it doesn’t get lost?

D. Plecas: When we have our visitors from New Brunswick out, I’m wondering if there would be an opportunity to meet with them at all informally beyond whatever the presentation is.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Sure, we can ask them. They’re here, so I can definitely ask them that.

D. Plecas: Just when they’re thinking of their travel plans, it might be an idea to have an invite for them to go to dinner with us or something.

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN AND YOUTH