Children and Youth — Issue No. 28 — Thursday, May 19, 2016 (HTML)

Present: Jane Thornthwaite, MLA (Chair); Doug Donaldson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Donna Barnett, MLA; Marc Dalton, MLA; Carole James, MLA; Maurine Karagianis, MLA; John Martin, MLA; Dr. Darryl Plecas, MLA; Linda Reimer, MLA; Jennifer Rice, MLA

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Joint Report of the Representative for Children and Youth and the Information and Privacy Commissioner: Cyberbullying: Empowering children and youth to be safe online and responsible digital citizens (November 2015):

• Dawn Thomas Wightman, Deputy Representative for Children and Youth, Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

• Bill Naughton, Associate Deputy Representative, CID, Chief Investigator, Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

• Alan Markwart, Associate Deputy Representative, Monitoring, Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

• oline Twiss, Policy Analyst, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner

4. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding the Joint Special Report of the Representative for Children and Youth and the Ministry of Children and Family Development: The Placement of Children and Youth in Care in Hotels in British Columbia (January 2016):

• Dawn Thomas Wightman, Deputy Representative for Children and Youth, Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

• Bill Naughton, Associate Deputy Representative, CID, Chief Investigator, Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

• Alan Markwart, Associate Deputy Representative, Monitoring, Office of the Representative for Children and Youth

5. The Committee reviewed additional documentation provided to the Committee and discussed the focus of upcoming meetings.

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
Joint Report: Cyberbullying: Empowering Children and Youth To Be Safe Online and Responsible Digital Citizens	655
M. Turpel-Lafond
E. Denham
Joint Report: The Placement of Children and Youth in Care in Hotels in British Columbia	662
M. Turpel-Lafond
A. Markwart
B. Naughton
Other Business	669

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I think we’ll get started right away since we’ve got a big agenda, and I know that some people have to leave early.

Welcome to the last Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth meeting during this session. We have two agenda items. First is consideration of the joint report of the Representative for Children and Youth and the Information and Privacy Commissioner. The report is Cyberbullying: Empowering Children and Youth to Be Safe Online and Responsible Digital Citizens.

Two, we have consideration of the joint special report of the Representative for Children and Youth and the Ministry of Children and Family Development, The Placement of Children and Youth in Care in Hotels in British Columbia.

We have two presenters for the first item, and that will be Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and Elizabeth Denham, and for the second item, we have Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. The ministry representatives wanted to present after their review on June 1, so we’re going to have them come back and update us on that item at another meeting.

Without further ado, I would like to welcome both Mary Ellen and Elizabeth to the Select Standing Committee, noting that we have allotted an hour for this item and 45 minutes to the second item. And noting that some people do have to leave early, it would be good if we could wrap it up a little bit earlier.

So go ahead. I don’t know how you’ve determined who’s going to speak first, but I’ll let you guys figure that out.

Joint Report: Cyberbullying:
Empowering Children and Youth
To Be Safe Online and
Responsible Digital Citizens

M. Turpel-Lafond: Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start just by saying good morning to everyone and introducing the staff that’s with me and, of course, also extending my good morning to my colleague the commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, and her staff. I’ll allow her to introduce, of course, her staff in a moment. We’ve divided up our presentation a little bit for you and left ample opportunity for questions.

I’ll just begin by introducing the Representative for Children and Youth staff that are present. At the table to my right, your left, is Deputy Representative Dawn Thomas-Wightman, and beside her is my chief investigator, Bill Naughton. Beside him is my associate deputy representative for monitoring, Alan Markwart.

In the gallery are a number of staff members that were involved with the two reports that we are presenting on today. Maria Montgomery works in my critical injury and death review unit and participated in the cyberbullying report preparation process. We have Jeff Rud, who’s with communications with the representative’s office, and we have three newer staff members who have come along today to meet the committee and who are in the transition into different teams in our organization.

First is Linda Hughes, who may be known to some in the greater Victoria area, as she’s a past president or CEO of the United Way and also past CEO of the Children’s Health Foundation. She’s joined the representative’s office. She’s actually come back after a period away doing all of those important community service roles. She is, effectively, job-sharing with Alan Markwart, who’s here, in the monitoring, research and evaluation area of the representative’s office. We’re very happy to have her back.

We also have Jen Miller, who has joined the representative’s office after having spent a significant career in the Ministry of Children and Families, liquor and gaming, and other ministries. She is working in a senior role in investigations with respect to the injury and death component of the representative’s mandate.

We also have, in the gallery, Rick Anthony, who’s joined as an investigator. He’s got a long period of service as a peace officer with a number of different organizations and forces, particularly in this region, and we’re very pleased to have him. He’s actively involved in our investigations.

I’ll just begin by saying that, and I’ll pause there and invite Commissioner Denham to introduce her staff.

E. Denham: Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, members of the committee. This is the first time that I’ve had the honour to present before you. With me today is oline Twiss, who’s a policy analyst with our office and was involved and did the heavy lifting from our part, our perspective, in the production of the report.

Also in the gallery is Michelle Mitchell, who is a communications officer with our staff.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I appreciate that we have two agenda items, so we’ll get right to those agenda items.

I know that there was some correspondence that was exchanged yesterday — in particular, a recent letter from the Deputy Attorney General and my response. I understand that because that just went out yesterday, there won’t be time to accommodate a discussion today on that. But I just note that I look forward to that opportunity in the near future.

First, I want to draw members’ attention to the report Cyberbullying: Empowering Children and Youth To Be Safe Online and Responsible Digital Citizens. That was released last November by Commissioner Denham and myself.
[ Page 656 ]

We decided to collaborate on this review of cyberbullying because it’s a complex issue, and it falls into both of our mandates. It was a matter of discussion. We came at it from somewhat different mandates, but as you will see from this report, a very common and shared viewpoint around what we believe is a workable approach to address the issue of cyberbullying, which is a concern, of course, to many children, families, educators and others across British Columbia.

Cyberbullying is the use of digital technologies, including social media, texts and instant messaging to harass and intimidate others. Committee members will know well that this issue became a prominent issue in British Columbia and nationally, particularly after the tragic death of Port Coquitlam teenager Amanda Todd. That was three and a half years ago. That was prompted, in part at least, by particularly vicious on-line bullying that Amanda experienced.

That has resulted in criminal charges in another jurisdiction, and, in fact, a criminal trial is underway in another jurisdiction related to that, which really speaks to, also, the global nature of potential victimization of children in terms of bullying activities.

There are other high-profile cases in Canada, like the case of Rehtaeh Parsons, a Nova Scotia girl who also experienced significant bullying.

Cyberbullying shares some of the characteristics of regular bullying, but there are significant differences. It’s often done anonymously, and its effects can be much more wide-ranging. They can be long-lasting, often leading to a real sense of hopelessness on the part of victims. As one of the youths we consulted in the report said: “In real life, you can walk away, but on line, it’s harder.”

Children and youth are now essentially linked to social media and the Internet 24 hours a day, expanding the potential for them to be involved in cyberbullying as bullies, victims or sometimes as both. The commissioner and I have presented in this report a more complex understanding of some of the dynamics that happen around these behaviours.

There is a greater potential for victimization to have a wide audience when it happens on line. Control over the contents and dispersal of posts is outside the influence of the victim. A post can go viral in an instant and, of course, can have a longer shelf life than face-to-face interactions, making it accessible indefinitely unless it’s taken down.

Taking something down on one site does not mean that it’s not available on other sites. Because of this, there’s certainly the sense of permanence to cyberbullying. It is different, as I said at the outset, than other forms of bullying. It requires, in our respectful view, a different response.

The issue of how best to prevent cyberbullying, how best to reduce the harm it causes and to dissuade those who cyberbully has certainly not been resolved conclusively by any jurisdiction. There is no magic formula. It’s a situation in which careful analysis and sharing is needed.

This report is not purporting to solve the issue. However, in my respectful view, I feel it’s a good examination of the issue, including direct input from B.C. youth, a comprehensive look at the literature and the examination of the practice in various jurisdictions, including British Columbia. We certainly have to recognize, as the commissioner and I and our staff have reflected in this report, that an alarmist or fear-based approach to cyberbullying is not a workable answer. Instead, we have to work together with children and youth to empower them to be solid digital citizens. That means focusing on digital citizenship rather than some of the more draconian ideas that are presented, such as shutting down access.

The commissioner and I have expressed some views about the role of the criminal justice system in addressing these issues and whether or not it should be the preferred approach. Some of those issues are within the federal realm in Canada and, I believe, are open to reconsideration at the moment. They have had a real and direct impact in British Columbia, where there are a number of prosecutions that have been undertaken. While they’re not all completed….

Certainly, in my role as representative, I watch them fairly closely. I also have the opportunity to see how those prosecutions impact the lives of kids and the types of lessons that they may learn from that or, in fact, the type of secondary harm that may be brought by a more draconian criminal approach to this issue versus a digital citizenship approach.

On recommendations. The commissioner and I made a number of recommendations. Most importantly, we believe that the B.C. government should take the lead in developing a comprehensive, cross-ministry strategy to tackle cyberbullying, and we saw that as embracing the B.C. Ministries of Education and Justice. We’re calling for a child-focused approach that includes strong prevention and education but also balances concerns that we rightly have about the privacy of young people and giving young people effective tools to be able to understand and protect their privacy and seek protection for their privacy when needed.

We would like to see a single point of accountability be identified with the B.C. government, with responsibility of these ministries in planning and implementing recommendations as soon as possible. For the Ministry of Education, we wanted to see developmentally appropriate learning objectives about cyberbullying and digital citizenship included in the new provincial school curriculum and these topics be made a mandatory part of professional development for all B.C. teachers going forward.

As I said, the criminal offence issues are significant issues. We certainly agree with the UNICEF approach,
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which has been articulated strongly at the national level before a number of committees that have examined this in the House of Commons and the Senate. UNICEF, like us, has called for a child-centred approach and to be very cautious about bringing more criminalization to young people’s behaviour when they’re in a stage where they need to learn and be supported.

We recommend in this report that the Attorney General of British Columbia consider developing prosecution guidelines for how to apply the criminal law in cases of cyberbullying in B.C. We also recommend and recognize that social media companies and Internet providers operating in B.C., which are sometimes global companies, bear some responsibility to the young people who use their products. We recommend that those companies develop processes and policies that facilitate the removal of personal information from social networks in cases of cyberbullying or in cases where personal information has been inappropriately posted without consent.

I’d just like to say, finally, before I invite the commissioner to round out our report content, that parents and caregivers clearly need to be involved actively as well. Just because our children have grown up in the digital age, we shouldn’t assume that they implicitly know how to deal with hostility and targeted attacks against them on line. These issues still require adult support. Parents and caregivers also need to be educated and supported to help kids create healthy boundaries and to learn tools on how to respond to what they will likely experience, which is exposure to or possibly the experience of cyberbullying on line.

As I said, this report and its recommendations are not magical solutions to cyberbullying. In my respectful view, they do represent a good, well-informed start. With that, I’ll pass it to my colleague, Commissioner Denham.

E. Denham: I was very pleased to collaborate with the representative and her office on this important project. This collaborative work is not unusual for legislative officers. I’ve partnered with the Auditor General to do audits in the past. In fact, we have an information security privacy audit going on right now. Where there are related mandates or even overlapping, we believe it’s in the public interest to collaborate and cooperate in our work.

When the representative and I became engaged in this partnership on this report, we really had a meeting of the minds that in most cases, it’s education and prevention rather than to react with enforcement that provided the more child-centred answer to cyberbullying. We highlight in this report a need for this comprehensive, multifaceted approach to the problem of cyberbullying.

I could also see that we needed a more nuanced approach than what I’d seen in the community, one that teased out why respecting the privacy of our kids is so very important. The surveillance of our kids is not the answer. Young people need some space, and they need some freedom to explore their identity and develop an autonomous sense of self.

I think parents need to be aware of what their kids are doing on line, but we say in the report that extensive parental monitoring and, certainly, covert surveillance is of limited benefit to protecting young people from cyberbullying. Open and supportive relationships with a parent or with another supportive adult lead to better protection of our kids and adolescents than monitoring does.

If you read media reports, you can see that the on-line world seems to have brought this explosion of damaging and harassing communications that are hurting our kids. It’s true, and it’s a very serious problem. But I think we have to remember in all of this that there are some very good things that kids are doing on the Internet. I don’t think — and I don’t think the kids think — of the Internet as a cesspool that they have to stay away from.

Really, I think we have to think about digital technologies and the Internet providing wonderful opportunities for our kids to connect on line, to be social and creative, work and play on line. So we have to be very careful about how we approach the problems of on-line safety and cyberbullying.

Solutions that involve surveillance can interfere with a young person’s development, their self-realization, their autonomy. Young people know this too. Research shows that when they’re being monitored, they employ a whole bunch of techniques to safeguard their privacy — everything from switching to different social media services that their parents don’t know about, using different media altogether, to other strategies.

The answer to these challenges is not to take the technology away or to introduce invasive surveillance tools to monitor our children in our schools, by non-profits, by companies. Approaches that involve surveillance can undermine the very trust that creates the foundation for empowering our kids.

Instead, we need to teach them how to behave on line in a way that’s respectful of others and that empowers them to express themselves responsibly. We need to ensure that our kids have digital literacy, which, broadly defined, means learning how to exercise rights and responsibilities and to participate ethically in life on line.

The representative and I are supporting an evidence-based multifaceted approach to this and one where government plays a strong and coordinating role. We’re also cautioning against more punitive approaches, such as a criminal law investigation lens for minors who engage in activities like sexting.

We saw this in the passing of the proposal for the federal Bill C-13, which is called Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act. That legislation makes it a criminal offence to distribute intimate images on line without consent. We’re concerned about this approach that criminalizes young people. We know that sexting or re-
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venge porn is a fairly common practice amongst youth, disturbing as it may be, but the answer is not to take a hammer to the iPad.

I think we have to think very carefully about bringing criminal sanctions against young people when it can ruin their lives. We’re looking for a more community-wide response, and we welcome new ways to approach the problem.

The answer is to start to be proactive with kids at a very, very young age. We want to promote good practices that are developmentally appropriate for young people. All of us are engaged in technology. We live large parts of our lives on line, and we have to be proactive to give our kids the tools that they need. It also means that we have to respect our kids and teach them autonomy and good social etiquette — sometimes known as netiquette — on line.

What we’re calling for here is a preventative, proactive, coordinated approach — one that’s not siloed off in government. Our boards of education could do more, again with a comprehensive strategy. The Ministry of Education needs a comprehensive digital literacy curriculum for kids that reaches out to all B.C. classrooms.

We understand that an interministerial working group was established in January of this year and that it includes some key ministries. I hope it will be expanded to include the Ministry of Finance, because the Ministry of Finance is responsible for the privacy legislation. I would also hope that my office — it would be my successor and my staff — is invited to be involved and to contribute to this working group. So far, we have not received an invitation.

This working group is undertaking its own examination of the issue, which intends to build upon the province’s ERASE strategy. I think the interministerial working group is a good first step, but we have a way to go to address the many facets of this issue.

That said, according to MediaSmarts’ report on teachers’ experience with networked technologies in the classroom, 88 percent of teachers believe that it’s very important for students to learn about understanding on-line privacy issues and settings, yet only 37 percent of teachers feel very confident about their knowledge and skills in teaching students in this area. So teachers may welcome some resources about developing digital literacy throughout our schools.

Kids are on line in kindergarten; kids are on line as toddlers. We need to be building their toolkit from preschool to grade 12 so that by the time they’re adults, they’re easily bringing safety and respect to all they do on line. We also note in the report that B.C.’s privacy law also applies to social media companies that are providing services to British Columbians, like Facebook. The recommendation is for social media companies to give kids the tools they need to be better digital citizens.

Social media companies are significant players in this space. I’ve met with Facebook, and I’ve talked with them about what they can do. The same principles apply to all on-line service providers that reach kids. They should make it easy for kids to remove posts that are harassing or are part of cyberbullying.

Social media companies should also provide policies written in clear, accessible, age-appropriate language for kids and have tools for how young people can take down harmful posts and report abuse. Kids should have a toolkit that helps them with easy access. That’s where the kids are, so let’s get the social media companies on board. We all know that there are brilliant engineers working for social media companies, and I believe they can place more focus on kids and on supporting kids to stay safe on line.

We’ve seen some movement — for example, with the Telus WISE program, which is teaching young people about their digital footprints and how to keep their digital footprints clean. We’d like to see more of that work. The vision is for all of our children and youth to be savvy Internet users, aware of their choices, of how to exercise them and of how to make responsible decisions for themselves and each other when they’re on line or off line.

Cyberbullying is a real issue that demands a real, meaningful response. B.C. has the leadership, it has the capacity, and it has the engagement to be a leading jurisdiction in this space. I hope you can all help us get there.

On the curriculum recommendation, or the recommendation around a comprehensive strategy, recommendation No. 1, I wondered whether you discussed the issue of — and it seems a bit odd to use the language, perhaps — a curriculum for parents. I really think that part of the challenge is parents who either aren’t aware of what’s going on or are afraid to talk with their kids about this kind of issue.

I think there’s huge interest. Certainly, in the school districts, when they put on workshops for parents — huge turnout, huge interest. I think people really are struggling with that. From my perspective, we need to make sure we’re including a comprehensive strategy that includes that kind of education opportunity for parents along with their kids.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I just would say that the research that we did in support of the report, which we document a little bit on page 13, really looks at the grade 4 to grade 8 period. The reporting by young people and by parents and teachers suggests that a lot of the cyberbullying activity kind of takes shape by about grade 4 and certainly has a peak in grade 7 and grade 8. It’s not the only time, but certainly there is a very important window of opportunity in both elementary and middle school environments
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— especially in the middle school environment — to do some significant work with parents.

One would hope a new curriculum would have clear guidance. We’ve also identified in the report breaking down cyberbullying into different concepts — you’ll see on page 12, understanding the difference between flaming and harassment and sexting. It requires difficult discussions, and it requires teachers to understand the different dimensions. It requires talking to kids and parents, and listening to parents about how they manage it.

The model we’ve recommended is an active model. Engaging parents and having the school as a forum and an event…. I mean, schools do offer, through parent advisory councils, some workshops. I would have to say, with respect, sometimes those are very alarmist and terrifying to parents and promote surveillance and shutdown. They’re fear-based, when actually, what we’re suggesting is that the on-line life of children is an extremely positive and important part of citizenship. Just like adults need to learn how to get along and respect each other and express their opinions in a way that’s respectful and appropriate, kids need to be taught how to do that through netiquette.

Your question is a good one, but I think we need to look, particularly, at those ages. So a complete curriculum, but those ages where it’s peaking and perhaps respect and support more middle school teachers and principals who have, I think, flagged this issue for some time.

M. Karagianis: Great presentation and, I think, very timely. The first thing that occurs to me is…. Obviously, this report came out in November, so I’d be interested in knowing what, if any, engagement you’ve had with government and specifically around the recommendations.

I note, Ms. Denham, you said that you have not been invited to participate in whatever activities government is undertaking internally. The issue of cyberbullying seems to be a perfect target for the kind of public service endeavours that we undertake around mental health and wellness and all of those. I mean, it seems to me that this is the kind of thing government could very easily undertake to start promoting the idea of netiquette, of not allowing yourself to be bullied, and all of that — get that messaging out to the public at large.

I’d be very interested to know what, if any, engagement or response you’ve had from government. Sadly, because we are only seeing this report now, those of us that have an opportunity to ask questions in estimates debate will have lost that opportunity now to go in and ask about some of these questions, which I think would have been very timely. But I’d be interested to know what, if any, response you’ve got now that it’s been a few months. Although this is the first formal presentation, government has been involved in this. I’d be really interested to hear what you had to say about that.

E. Denham: Maybe I’ll start. In a sense, I’m Robin to Mary Ellen’s Batman in this project and a little bit on her coattails, because I think 75 percent of the work and the research really came from Mary Ellen’s shop.

What I wanted to add to it is, I think, a really important element, and that’s to take away this sort of fear-based approach to teaching kids about the on-line world. It is and is going to be part of their lives forever. This has to be handled in a really nuanced way and not in a way that surveils our kids. I do think I have something to add to this.

I also have the ability to connect with social media companies, because we have oversight over the private sector in British Columbia and connections around the world. I’ll certainly take these concerns with me when I go to the United Kingdom.

We were not invited to even observe the interministerial committee, and I do think we have something to add to the equation. I was copied on a letter. That’s as far as I’ve been involved in the responses to the report.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah, just to say that I share Commissioner Denham’s disappointment. The interministerial committee has met twice. I certainly would have entertained and appreciated an invitation to go to the committee and present the report and discuss it. They’ve met twice, and we don’t have a clear workplan. They are to report to us in June in some form. Whether or not the strategies that they’re looking at have an evaluation or a mechanism is something we’ll be looking at carefully.

A significant emphasis in British Columbia has been placed on ERASE Bullying. The commissioner and I, in this report, have said that we feel fairly strongly that cyberbullying needs a dedicated, focused approach. We did not analyze and evaluate ERASE Bullying, although we spent some time talking about it. There are some challenges, when you do look at it, in terms of the fact that the uptake on it is limited and the impact may not be as great as one anticipated or have the promise that it appeared to have had at one point.

The main recommendation that we had around avoiding what we frequently see, which is that there are a lot of silos when it comes to children, was to have a single point of accountability in government to address cyberbullying. We’ve seen this on many other issues, whether it’s mental health with children or matters where you have Attorney General, Education…. You have a variety of responsibilities, but you don’t have a single point of accountability.

We have not received a response to that. Again, it’s difficult to move forward on the recommendations when there’s no clarity on that single point of accountability.

The recommendation around the curriculum is one that we think is quite significant. How that will be incor-
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porated into the curriculum, how that will be delivered to students, how teachers will receive professional development training and having a consistent approach across British Columbia is important.

For instance, clear and concise information to young people about how to take down offensive material quickly. This is an area where it relies on people to navigate that. A young person needs to know, if they’ve been the target of flaming and it is causing enormous distress in their lives, how to cope with the distress but also: how do they take that down?

The commissioner has been very active in addressing social media and Internet service providers. I think she’s one of the most active Information and Privacy Commissioners in Canada in terms of actually seeing the significance and dealing with people.

But young people need to know how to do that. And their teachers, who are living with that dynamic, and their parents need to know how to do that. So that’s, for instance, a core part of the curriculum I had anticipated we would have been presented with by now.

Now, I’m not saying all is lost. We’re very happy to look at that. But we don’t want to be telling young people: “Oh, call the Privacy Commissioner’s office, and then they will walk you through a process.” We want them actually to be able to interface directly, with the support of their school and their parents. And just like anyone would know, if you experience an assault, “This is what you do about it,” if this digital footprint now is extremely abusive and harassing or flaming to you, how do you respond?

That’s just a really specific example. We’re not, certainly, expecting the world to change overnight. But on basic things like safety tools and privacy tools, we would like to see that explicit in that curriculum and the tools explicitly developed in a practical and pragmatic way for kids. At this point, we haven’t seen that.

I certainly remain ever the optimist that we can get there, and I share the commissioner’s view that we have lots of talented people in British Columbia that can accomplish a lot if we actually work together and stay focused on it.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I’ve got a question, but I’m going to give you, by way of background, as well…. For five years now we’ve run a contest for 13- to 18-year-olds out of our Stikine offices with Dan Hamhuis of the Vancouver Canucks. The contest is based on what is a burning issue with youth in our constituency. Two years ago it was cyberbullying. The winner wrote an essay on how she’d been cyberbullied. It really, to me….

I knew the parents, and I echo the comments from my colleague that the parents dealt with it in a loving and compassionate and empathetic manner. It took months, many months, but if the young girl hadn’t had that kind of support at home, it would have been very difficult for her to overcome what happened to her. So I think that focusing on the children is good, but a two-pronged approach, as well, with the parents, is important.

My question is on recommendation No. 1. You’ve pointed out in the past…. These recommendations, not just No. 1 but overall, relate to at least three different ministries: Education, Justice and perhaps another ministry. In the past, you pointed out that your reports that had recommendations that are cross-ministry have had difficulty with the implementation. I think of the poverty issues that you’ve pointed out: poverty reduction plan, youth mental health, the overrepresentation of aboriginal youth — all those you highlighted that were multiministry recommendations that really haven’t been acted upon.

Do you have concerns that this will happen with the cyberbullying report because it’s across ministries? Why is it more difficult, do you believe, for government to implement recommendations that are across ministries rather than targeting one ministry?

E. Denham: I think the obvious problem is coordination, but I’m thinking of other types of initiatives that have happened across government where there was a lead ministry and they managed to get a project done — especially technology projects, like the B.C. Services Card where there was a lead ministry but there were other agencies involved in that. It can happen.

It seems obvious to the representative and I that it would be the Ministry of Education that should be the accountable, sort of single point of entry for these kinds of initiatives, suggesting that the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice would also be key players. But having not made a similar recommendation in my reports in the past, I can’t comment beyond that.

This is not…. As we said, a siloed approach isn’t going to work. It needs to be well resourced. It needs to be an area of focus for the government — and senior leadership committed to do this work.

It affects our kids in really significant ways, especially vulnerable kids. To your point about the contest, the young woman who wrote the essay and the family that worked with her to get through that problem, not all kids have that kind of loving support at home. So I think, particularly with vulnerable kids, this is a problem that they can’t face on their own, and they may not have a parent who has the time, the energy, the ability — a supportive adult to help them through that. So I think this is a really significant issue for the government to focus on.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): If nobody has any other questions, I just have a comment/question. Thank you very much for your report and your research. I’ve actually personally been involved in this issue and have done some significant work on cyberbullying. My question is actually more holistic and goes beyond government.

Elizabeth, I was really interested in your comments on how you would get Facebook…. Let’s look at Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram — all of these social media outlets. If we look at the cyberbullying that occurs amongst adults, let alone children, and the almost impossibility of getting information that is incorrect off the Internet…. I mean, this is a rampant problem worldwide, and no matter what British Columbia does…. The Netherlands is where the action is happening, as we speak, with regards to Amanda Todd.

My question is from a global perspective. Elizabeth, how do you feel — and, perhaps, other privacy commissioners — about your influence globally on these Internet companies?

E. Denham: Thanks for that great question. It’s a super complex area, and I agree that cyberbullying is a tough, tough issue for adults and children. Of course, we’re focusing on children — who need, I think, specific tools and specific kinds of communication and a toolbox to really assert their rights and take bullying messages down. So we were focusing on children.

To your point, around the world: we belong to many networks of privacy commissioners that are working together on this very problem. Two years ago there were 19 jurisdictions that did a sweep of children’s social media sites and communicated with all the companies about how they could do a better job to help kids in this arena.

I agree. A lot of these issues bump up against freedom of expression, freedom of speech so you can’t expect an intermediary like an Internet company to react to all requests to pull down information, because they are constitutionally protected rights.

The focus on kids, though, I think is the right place to go, with special tools, with special sites, with nudging and pushing the Internet companies to design their systems in a way that helps kids navigate this world.

But there’s a lot of work going on internationally — throughout Western Europe, throughout the Asia-Pacific Rim — on this issue. We’ve got a lot of materials on our website. We will continue to try to encourage Internet companies to be fair with kids and give them the tools.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you for your work, and thank you for yourself and your colleagues across the world attempting that insurmountable feat with the Internet companies.

Speaking about working together internationally, are there any best models out there — either in Canada, the U.S. or around the world — that are educating kids about this?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think the experience is uneven. There are some very good portals on digital citizenship that are American, in particular, that are used extensively — for instance, in U.S. classrooms.

One of the challenges in Canada — the commissioner and I refer to this fairly extensively in the report — is at the national level. The position that was taken until very recently was to criminalize the behaviour, as a response. I appreciate that the newly elected federal government is re-examining whether or not those new criminal offences were the best approach to this issue.

Canada’s approach has been, at the national level, to create a new catalogue of sexual offences — around sexting, for instance. That is not necessarily consistent with what we are recommending. We certainly are looking at other countries, in the European context and elsewhere, that have taken different approaches.

What I think you will see is that there is initially a first wave of “someone has to do something about it so let’s make it a criminal offence” and then realizing that it’s more complex and that making it a criminal offence can actually criminalize young people and not necessarily predators — although, obviously, it’s important to address that.

In Canada, the offence allows even a young person…. We have cases where 16-year-olds are being prosecuted in British Columbia. They share — even, perhaps, with consent — a sexualized image, and they’re being prosecuted. So it doesn’t develop the tools and the knowledge.

There are jurisdictions that have taken a different approach. We’ve had something of a cloud over our approach in Canada. We did send our report to the national government, and I believe that they are going to be looking again at some of those Criminal Code offences and reconsidering if that’s working.

I think it will be important for us to bring information from British Columbia. Certainly, one of the reasons why we recommend that the Attorney General have some prosecutorial guidelines is because we were worried about that. There’s lots of opportunity for British Columbia to influence that and to have a more nuanced child-focused approach consistent, for instance, with UNICEF.

UNICEF monitors it around the world and looks at other countries that have taken a more child-focused approach, and they tend to be the northern European countries.

E. Denham: I’m just going to add to that. Nova Scotia passed a cyberbullying law taking a real criminal justice focus to the problem, and the law was recently struck down. So that’s not a way to go.

L. Reimer: Are there other jurisdictions that have included cyberbullying in their education curriculum?
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M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, there are extensive jurisdictions, particularly in the U.S. — the state of California, as an example. I mean, obviously, some states have a more decentralized education system than others. We have a fairly decentralized approach to allow boards and, actually, teachers and others around their classrooms in British Columbia…. There are jurisdictions that have had a much more active approach, also using on-line resources that are well facilitated in the classroom by a lot of teacher education and training and also giving young people tools to protect privacy.

That’s one of the dimensions here: giving young people tools to understand their privacy, to create safety and to control their digital footprint in a more healthy way — also making sure that they are good digital citizens and that they can use all the vast, positive resources that the Internet has brought into the lives of children and families. It’s not a hostile thing; it’s a positive thing.

We see some jurisdictions…. We think there’s a great potential in Canada, and British Columbia has a lot of strength. It’s just unfortunate that the ERASE Bullying strategy appears to have been the umbrella to look at cyberbullying. We’re suggesting that that become a more appropriate and more sophisticated approach in this province.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you both very much for all your work on this topic.

Our next agenda item is the placement of children and youth in care in hotels in British Columbia.

There’s been a suggestion we take a two-minute break, just to be able to change the chairs.

Joint Report: The Placement of
Children and Youth in Care
in Hotels in British Columbia

M. Turpel-Lafond: I’m now going to present to the committee a report that’s an important joint special report that I released with Minister Stephanie Cadieux in mid-January of this year. This report represents the most accurate count of how often hotels were being used as placements for children and youth in care of the provincial government.

I want to recognize that staff, both in my office and at the Ministry of Children and Families, worked cooperatively to produce this report. My preference was that we would present together. I appreciate that they will be coming later, and I really wanted to just recognize the lead staff that we worked with at the ministry. We have a close, professional working relationship, and it was a very good process. That includes Cory Heavener, who’s our provincial director of child welfare; Alex Scheiber, who’s the deputy provincial director; and Trish Matthews, who’s a senior analyst in their office.

Our teams worked closely together under some significant time constraints to address an area where there was what I would respectfully call low-information decision-making, meaning people were making important decisions about the lives of kids, about where they would live, with low levels of information and understanding about what was happening on the ground.

Historic information on the use of hotels going back more than just a few years is unreliable, in part because of issues with the integrated case management computer system. We do know that the ministry and its delegated agencies have been temporarily placing children and youth in care in hotels going back to at least the 1990s. With senior ministry staff manually tracking hotel placements since November 2014, we now have a better sense of the frequency of such placements and some of the reasons for those placements.

The report that the minister and I released in January shows that…. I would suggest to you that the numbers are probably under-reported because we didn’t actually go to every single office in every service delivery area and review it. However, it showed that at least 117 children and youth in government care were placed in hotels between November 2014 and October 2015. That’s the number. The number of nights is another thing, in terms of how long they spent in hotels.

Some of those young people were in hotels more than once. They came back and spent repeated periods of time in hotels. One of them had four different hotel stays during that period. The total number of hotel placements, if you consider the same young person is going back again and again, was 131. So 117 separate children and 131 placements, meaning the same children, at least in the instance of…. One was placed in a hotel four times during that period for different stays.

This number points to a problem that the report is the first step in addressing. That’s the informal use of hotel stays to supplement a system that is revealing some systemic challenges around resources and an appropriate match between the needs of children and the residential supports that are in our child-serving system.

These hotel placements were, of course, temporary placements. However, each one represents a period in a young person’s life when he or she was not living in a family setting, when I’m sure they felt transient and probably a little lost. Despite the average stay for a child or youth in a hotel being about 2.7 nights across all of them, one youth — in this case, this was Mr. Alex Gervais — was placed in a hotel for a total of 49 nights. I’ll return to his situation in a moment.

As I’ve said many times to this committee, every child needs and deserves to live in a family setting, and a hotel is not a family setting. I’ll continue to push for the use of
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hotels to be abolished completely in British Columbia. I have advocated and encouraged the government to actually adopt that as a goal: to abolish the use of hotels and to set a date for that. I respect and understand the minister has not done that because she doesn’t feel it is within the realm of possibility and that the ministry and its staff will still have to use hotels.

However, as the child advocate, I continue to be of the view that we should take a view of abolishing it and making a commitment to end it and a time frame to end it. At this point, without a time frame, and given the situation that pertains, I do not see the use of hotels ending any time soon.

As a result of this joint special report, MCFD now has a practice directive and a written policy around the use of hotels, and it is tracking and reporting on the use of hotels. My chief investigator here, Mr. Naughton, is tracking for our office those reports and monitoring them as he tracks and monitors reportable circumstances for children throughout British Columbia. We are looking at it, we can give you an impression of what we’re seeing, but they continue to come into our office.

Children and youth, under this practice directive, are to be placed in hotels only under “exceptional circumstances for short durations.” They must be approved by a designated director, and hotels must be used only “when no other appropriate resource is available.”

MCFD has committed to report on its use of hotels every six months, and the reporting to my office is that any use of a hotel over three nights is reported to my office. If it’s less than three nights, it is not reported. I will be looking carefully at the report in June to make sure both categories are publicly reported — and, of course, looking at regions and places where that is higher and at what is happening.

A number of children and youth in care of the B.C. government during the period covered by this report experienced similarly lengthy stays in hotels. Six were placed for 11 or more nights and three for 20 or more nights. One youth, to whom I referred earlier, Mr. Gervais, spent 49 nights in a hotel. He died while in that hotel placement, a tragedy that prompted this report and some of these changes.

Mr. Gervais’s death is a matter of an active investigation by our office, which is underway and which is exploring, among other things, Mr. Gervais’s experience in care throughout his entire time in care. Also, we are having the opportunity to convene with a number of young people who were placed in group homes that Mr. Gervais was also placed in and which were shut down, causing a number of young people to be dispersed, including into hotels.

We’re bringing together young people to round out what you see in this report and to get more of a youth focus. What is the experience of young people such as the foster brothers and sisters of Alex Gervais, who were in group homes with him, and some other ones, who were in hotels? I’m anticipating, in the Gervais report, we may be able to offer to the committee an understanding of how the youth experience that process. What was it like for them? What was going on that, in their mind, caused them to get into a hotel? How did they experience it? How did they come out of it?

Amplifying and understanding their footprints and their voices through this is very significant. Obviously, a number like the 117 youth in hotels doesn’t tell us very much about what’s going on in their lives.

As people around the room know…. For families, a visit to a hotel is a holiday. It’s a positive thing. It’s a great visit to another community. For these kids and Mr. Gervais’s experience, we will learn more about…. For some of these kids, they certainly do report that it is a very strong sense of not being wanted anywhere else. The manner in which they are supported in that hotel, whether there’s a paid child care worker in the hotel with them or in another room or how that works…. These are matters of deep sensitivity to young people and children.

When we think about the numbers, it’s not about numbers. I always come back to that. We need to really think about what state of mind is going on in an environment and come back to that key point, which is that a hotel environment is not a family environment.

In terms of the gaps…. For instance, we’ve had a lot of discussions simultaneous to this report prepared on hotels. These are important discussions in terms of providing context to the committee but also for understanding the type of work that we’re engaged in, on a regular basis, in my role as advocate and our staff advocating for children — and, of course, the ministry in their guardianship role, community-serving agencies and others.

To appreciate that, if we just take, for instance, what happened when this series of group homes was shut down in the Lower Mainland. Let’s come to that, because I think it provides the appropriate context here.

You may be familiar with the fact that there was a series of group homes operated by one operator called Community Visions in the Lower Mainland. They had 15 years of experience operating and, in February 2015, had 24 homes with 35 children. It just gives you a context of what was going on. In January and February, MCFD performed a child protection investigation of those homes after there were numerous issues that came forward from the kids, including issues that came forward from our office.

The ministry’s investigation found instances where youth were exposed to domestic violence. They were dropped off in inappropriate locations. They were using drugs in the homes with the knowledge of the caregivers. Caregivers were using drugs in the home. Youth and caregivers were using drugs together in the home. Youth
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were denied access to their home overnight. There were infestations of rodents in the home. There was mould in the home. There were unsanitary conditions. There was verbal abuse by caregivers — among others.

These are the things that MCFD found in its protocol investigation that came to light, in part, through our office, by young people reporting concerns. In addition to that ministry protocol investigation, they found that caregivers had criminal records, and some of them had outstanding criminal matters and warrants. Further allegations were brought forward of abuse, including sexual abuse, provision of drugs, abandonment and physical violence against the kids. This was sort of going on simultaneously to the work on the report.

In the spring of 2015, this particular provider was audited by Ernst and Young at the ministry’s expense. They found that there were some significant challenges with operational and management practices. That’s the MCFD’s finding. MCFD moved to shut down all of these resources and end the contract. I give that as a context. The system is particularly sensitive in these instances.

When they did do that, we had very serious concerns about 33 kids, at that time, who were in those resources. So we’re shutting down a number of group homes. There are serious issues that have been corroborated and found. The ministry has taken an important step in investigating those. I recognize that as a significant step, but in the end, we’re dealing with 33 young people.

Quite an intense process was underway to look at what the planning was. A number of the young people, about five, were moved into independent living, meaning that they’d live on their own. Whether they were capable of living on their own or not is another story, but they were moved into independent living because they were getting older. About 11 of them were moved to alternative placements, and about 11 of them were moved to new homes with the same caregivers, who were under contract but in a new arrangement. Different things were worked out. The ministry has to find a way forward, if you like.

This really reflected the jam the ministry is in around not having places for children to live. What we found, just reflecting on the hotel issue, was the transition from the shutdown of those resources…. There was, on paper, an identification of someone will go here, and someone will go here. Well, lo and behold, as the process unfolded, children ended up in SROs in the Downtown Eastside. They ended up homeless, and they ended up in hotels.

This is the challenge. The broader situation is really one of a systemic, underlying problem. Closing resources may very well be necessary under a variety of circumstances, including these circumstances. However, the gap that is presented around, in the Lower Mainland…. That’s just an example of the Lower Mainland. I have other examples around the province, and there are acute pressures in other places.

The joint report was prepared by officials from my office and the ministry working with full knowledge of the pressures and difficulties. The interviews in the report with staff and others attempted to really allow the staff to reflect on why hotels are being used, what the pressures are and why, even after a practice directive was put in place for approval of hotels, they were continuing to be used. These are ongoing, active conversations.

I would have liked to have been able to present today with the ministry and say that we will prohibit all use of hotels, that the ministry and the children’s representative, as in other provinces — Manitoba, Saskatchewan and others — have agreed to a moratorium in the hotel placements and that it will have an effective date. Unfortunately, I’m here today saying there’s no agreement in place on that and we continue to grapple with some serious issues.

M. Karagianis: As always, these reports are deeply disturbing. They uncover information that I think is important to recognize.

It concerns me, obviously, that…. The report is about hotel stays, but your investigation or the comments here have revealed the circumstances of those 33 children and how those particular living arrangements proceeded for such a long time without oversight. You’ve made no comment on that. Perhaps that’s very specifically not about hotel stays.

I think an important piece of this story is the lack of resources. Hotel stays are because there are not enough appropriate foster homes. There are not enough appropriate group homes. The circumstances around this group of business-arranged group homes, I think, are very disturbing as well — that those circumstances would have gone on to the point that you had reports of really disturbing environments and circumstances for those children before they were even put into downtown SROs or wherever.

Just listening to, “Yes, there’s this number of hotel stays, and we want this to stop,” which I think is absolutely imperative…. I wouldn’t mind you commenting a little bit more on just the lack of resources and the backstory on this, because the lack of appropriate emergency foster care…. I know the circumstances of that. At one point, I provided that service in the community I lived in, up in Powell River. I was an emergency foster parent. I know what that entails.

The whole structure around where these children are placed. Could you comment on that a little bit? I think that’s a pretty imperative part of the story here. It’s not just how many times they stayed in hotels but why and what steps the ministry needs to take.
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What I’m going to do is I’m going to invite Alan Markwart to comment on that. Alan has had a significant career with responsibility for residential services.

Perhaps, Alan, if you can give a bit of the background and the current state as to where we are with these issues.

A. Markwart: I think you identify a really critical point. If we put this in the context that if you look at…. The recent budget lift for the ministry addressed or will address…. It’s principally focused on addressing staffing issues, which is something that our office has flagged for a very long time out of The Thin Front Line and also quality assurance issues. Hopefully, that will lead to improvements in terms of timeliness of investigations, needs assessments by social workers, planning, referral, case management.

The question is: referral to what, assessment for what and case management of what? That’s where the other side of the service system is not being attended to. It’s exactly the point that you make. All of that side is either foster care or services delivered by agencies, whether it’s youth care workers or day programs, but principally residential services, which are delivered by private agencies.

If you look at that aspect of the system, there are huge holes in it. For what’s typically known as intermediate care, especially treatment-focused resources, sometimes known as step-up, step-down resources — the kind of in-between specialized staffed resources between foster care and, say, for example, Maples or Ledger House or even youth custody or residential substance-use treatment programs — there isn’t a system per se. There are huge holes. There’s a lot of ad hoc scrambling to develop one-off specialized resources for kids.

I appreciate that there’s a recent announcement with the ministry around developing some small number of shelter beds in the Downtown Eastside in 2017. But that’s 2017, and shelter beds are, again, simply temporary stopgaps. It’s a shelter bed, and then the question is: what? Many of these are kids with very complex needs, multi-problem kids who need specialized and — sorry to say — sometimes expensive resources.

I was actually the executive lead in the ministry a few years back. There was a joint report done with the Federation of Community Social Service Agencies of B.C., together with the ministry, doing a comprehensive review of residential services. It identified that critical issue of intermediate resources. There is a whole host of recommendations flowing from that. The ministry has done some work, but it’s mostly the low-hanging fruit around policy and training. The substantive investment that’s required around the development of a comprehensive system of residential treatment and care has not been done.

Just a final point. If you are going to have an effective system of residential care, you essentially need a surplus number of beds, not just the exact right number of beds, so that you’re able to match a kid’s unique needs with the right kind of resource and not just simply place them in whatever bed is available. Mary Ellen referenced the 33 kids. Well, that’s less than 0.05 of the number of kids in care. Yet that tiny percentage — not even a percentage — of kids led to all kinds of unintended outcomes simply because there wasn’t the appropriate capacity within the system to accommodate those kids, nor the right kinds of beds at the right time for those kids.

C. James: I wanted to follow up on this piece as well. I’m glad you referenced the report with the federation. Certainly, from my perspective — at the time, being the critic — those issues were raised around exactly that — the need to have surplus beds, the need to have additional specialized homes, in particular, available in the community.

I remember that when those cuts were made, the government talked about: “We can’t be funding beds that we’re not filling.” But I think that shows a lack of understanding of the need to have those emergency beds available for what often happens in the middle of the night, often happens after hours, often happens in a crisis situation.

I think the flip side of that, as well, is the pressure on the people who do provide those specialized beds right now. I’ve certainly had those discussions with foster parents who are specialized foster parents and who are exhausted. They want to continue to do the work but are ready to give up because they’re exhausted from the constant pressure of: “Take another child. Take another baby. We know you just finished with a baby, but we have another one that’s waiting.”

I think the flip side of that is the pressure on the people who are doing the work. My fear is that we’re going to lose those homes as well, because of the incredible pressure that they’re facing.

I guess the question I wanted to speak about was just the coordination. There’s a bit of irony, I guess, in the question — the delegated aboriginal agencies that talk about the need for a coordinated list so that everybody is aware of what resources are there. When there aren’t resources, the use of a coordinated list makes no sense, obviously. But I wonder if you’ve seen any kind of movement on even coordination with a short amount of resources that are there in the community, between the ministry and delegated agencies and those people who take those kids into care.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. I will give a few comments, but I’m going to invite Bill Naughton to speak a bit more deeply about the discussion about coordination and the impact on the system.

Just on that, in the delegated agency issues…. Obviously, that’s a major issue in the Gervais investigation as well. I
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wouldn’t say its’ finger-pointing necessarily, but the kids that came out of the shutdown of the ACV, including Mr. Gervais, then were sent to agencies who didn’t have any resources to provide.

But I would speak, really, to what the delegated agencies said. I think we quote from them on page 12 of the report. They expressed deep concern. They’re somewhat traumatized as agencies. We have a quote there saying: “All we can think in their little heads is what they’re thinking: ‘Can’t they find one person who wants me?’” Or another child care worker, on page 13 of the report, said: “I can’t really soothe the child” who’s in a hotel, because “I can’t tell them what will happen next.”

This is that sense of: these are frailties. So not only is there a problem with coordination, but the issue on the front is: what are the people with the children able to say to the child? It’s that high anxiety. So we’ve got some serious issues, as you can imagine, around the province with real kids and real cases where we are in this very difficult situation where the child’s bouncing around all the time.

Younger children are one thing. As they get older, to 15 or 16, and they’re offered what might be considered to be very unsuitable placements in another group home, of course they’re not there. As we know — right here, just a block away — some of them end up in very dangerous places — in the Downtown Eastside, as I reported. The ministry recently released its report about 124 kids in the Downtown Eastside, including SROs, and we have them in the tent city in Victoria.

Should they be in the tent city, or should they be in a hotel? Well, I’d rather have them in a hotel than the tent city, but I’d rather not have them in the hotel. I feel very much, as a child advocate, like I’m being presented with things that are so compromised that this is not part of child welfare. This is some other vision, a much more dystopian vision of what we’re supposed to be doing to care for kids with complex needs.

I’ll ask Bill Naughton to speak a bit about the coordination issues and what we found in this joint endeavour.

B. Naughton: Thank you. Just to address the first part of your question with respect to the issue of capacity within the system, I wanted to highlight that the information we’re receiving here really is coming from front-line staff, whether in the delegated aboriginal agencies or in MCFD. So these are not the assertions of our office solely. This is information that’s being drawn from people who are working with these children and youth on the front line every day.

One of the things that came out strongly in our interviews was that although we tend to characterize things that happen for children and youth whose placements break down or who are unexpectedly brought into care…. I think there’s a tendency to think of these things as being emergencies, and I would suggest that that’s probably, actually, an inaccurate characterization.

In a child welfare system, these are in fact relatively predictable events. So you see, running throughout the report and throughout the interviews — not all of which, obviously, for reasons of length, we could include here — a common theme about the issue of trying to build some excess capacity to absorb those predictable breakdowns or those predictable emergencies. But you also saw a fear that as soon as a space was created, that space would quickly be overtaken or utilized because of the excess demand in community.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about that. These things — although we think of them as emergencies, in fact they’re predictable and routinized to some degree. So you can plan and base that not around a concept of crisis but really around the concept that that’s a normalized way of doing business.

Another thing I wanted to just point out was that one of the things that also came out very strongly — and it relates to the point around the support for foster parents — really was a lot of emphasis from the interviews on the support of existing placement. If you’re able to provide appropriate supports for foster parents, those placements are more secure. They’re less likely to break down, and you’re less likely to have to then look for an emergency placement.

I know in one case that we’ve been monitoring in our office, a young woman in the north, 16 years of age…. Her placement broke down at the end of February in this year. Despite having canvassed across her community and related other areas surrounding that community and across the province, by April, MCFD still hadn’t been able to locate a suitable placement for this young woman. That speaks again to the capacity issue that we face. I think that goes to the root of what this is about.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I’m very concerned about what I would say is an inadequate response from the Ministry of Children and Family Development to this report.

I mean, we all agree, and the ministry agrees, that hotel placements are not an appropriate place for children in care, yet the response we’ve seen, specifically, in the Downtown Eastside was the provision of five beds for 124 children that are known to be at risk. The ministry’s own numbers were that there were 20 children in imminent crisis and five beds. So I don’t know. I guess the other 75 percent of the kids are out of luck.

There was also the report that the representative highlighted around a young woman who had an encounter with these group homes. At least in her history, jail was used as an option — as a safe placement.

There seems to be a simple solution to this, and it’s called “resources.” Yet I want to point out that Manitoba faced a similar situation with the topic of hotel use, and within seven months, they had addressed it. They had
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added 55 emergency shelter beds and 114 emergency foster beds. Their policy is: no hotel spaces.

It’s eight months since Alex Gervais died, and we have five more beds in one place in the province. That’s this government’s response, and that’s this ministry’s response. I think that’s, again, totally inadequate.

We’ve canvassed the minister on this, and she has not been transparent. She has not been forthcoming on this, so I’m going to ask you.

You did the joint report with the ministry. Do you know if the ministry knows, or have you been able to determine, how much additional capacity is required to address this, regarding residential placements? And something that I have not been able to get from the minister: are there additional resources in this budget that we are considering for those increased residential placements?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. Well, I’ll just address a few things. The Manitoba situation — we flagged it. In Manitoba, the government said that they had a directive. It was different than the directive here. The directive here is how to track and monitor hotel use.

The directive in Manitoba was to prohibit the use of hotels for even emergency placements. The government created a hotel reduction team, and that team worked to create 114 emergency foster beds and more, I believe. I think it’s closer to about 140 now. In any event, it took a significant effort.

In British Columbia, I certainly advocated for that approach, and I continue to advocate for that approach. To me, it’s pretty clear, as a child advocate. Kids don’t stay in hotels, but it would be inappropriate for me to suggest to the public that that is not going to continue to happen in British Columbia. It does continue to happen, as we continue to get reports of kids in hotels.

On the issue of the budget, I watch very carefully the budget and the budget analytics. As you know, the ministry received a lift, in the budget that’s before you, of approximately $67 million.

In my previous work presented to this committee, such as the work on The Thin Front Line from a few years ago, I have said that there’s about a $100 million hole in the budget of MCFD, just because it’s been stand-pat and the erosion in the budget and staffing.

The $67 million is a valuable and important addition that will address staffing concerns, but that’s staffing in child safety. There is no new money in that budget to deal with residential services, and that’s a significant point.

I can again ask Alan Markwart to comment more extensively in terms of what it would cost, because the analytics were prepared, to some extent, when the joint review was done a few years ago. In part, the committee members will know, the ministry received a report of an independent — or perhaps not-so-independent — consultant in terms of the Plecas review of the ministry, looking at how the ministry needs to be put on some new foundation.

I’ve issued a report on it, but I’m not being provided any of the material and any of the analytics that Mr. Plecas or his team used in reaching their conclusions, so I’m not able to analyze anything at the moment. Unfortunately, in that area, I’m only going to have to deal with what I’ve known before, because I’m not familiar with what the ministry is relying on at the moment. But I can ask Mr. Markwart to talk about the analytics of the past that we are more privy to.

A. Markwart: Yeah, in the joint review, actually, it did not come up with a precise number of beds. What it observed was, as I said earlier, that there were some very significant gaps, especially in reference to intermediate treatment and care — step-up, step-down resources, treatment, foster care, appropriate supports for foster parents. What it recommended was that the ministry needed to go out and do a comprehensive needs assessment to kind of tackle those numbers.

I think it would be fair to say that the consensus of the working group, which was comprised of ministry staff and federation staff, was that there were very significant holes in the residential care system and that the bill, depending on what you wanted to do, could be anywhere from $50 million to $100 million. That would be, in part, dependent on whether you wanted to include secure care in the mix as well.

J. Rice: Two questions. I’m looking at the numbers with the service delivery areas and the hotel placements. Because the service delivery areas are so broad, what I want to know is the difference between the rural and urban. Who’s in hotels in the urban versus the rural? Is there a way of picking that apart?

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, the situation is fairly consistent throughout the province that hotels are being used. Some regions a little bit more — Fraser, in particular. But the north is a sensitive point.

There also is the thing that’s not being shown in this report — the transportation of kids from the north to other places to reside. We don’t look at that. We’re just looking at hotel placements. If you actually track the movement of moving kids out, you would see a lot of movement of kids from the north to other regions to obtain service.

In terms of the age, the age ranges from the truly newborn coming out of hospital into a hotel with a child care worker to Alex Gervais — 18-year-olds. It’s the full spectrum. Then sometimes it’s sibling groups — four kids. So it’s the full range.
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When the ministry produces its report in June, I’ll be looking very carefully at a fulsome reporting on that. We are seeing a full spectrum, so it’s not to say it’s just here, with this age group.

Of course, on the adolescent side, it’s slightly different. Maybe Bill can speak to the adolescent issue, because you have a bit of a perfect storm of a bunch of things falling apart, meaning they’ve been in care for a long time. They’ve got some serious issues that have been going on for some time, underlying mental health issues that have not been treated, and then we suddenly have a very different situation where the hotel placement becomes kind of locked in.

B. Naughton: I think if you look at page 8 of the report, it actually provides a graph with respect to the ages of children at the time of placement. What you’ll see there is that there is a significant bulge in very young children, the young children the representative referenced earlier — essentially, kids who were maybe seized from parents at birth or shortly thereafter due to urgent safety concerns.

Then you see a really significant spike starting at the age of approximately 13. It’s at that point where you start to see more complex mental health issues emerging for young people. You start to see substance use becoming more prevalent.

You also see a cohort of children from about ten to 13 years of age where group home placement is not going to be appropriate. These are not kids who can function in a group home placement. They’re going to need a family setting, and the lack of capacity there really speaks, I think, to this surge that you see in early adolescence.

There are very distinct cohorts, but certainly, this adolescent cohort is the most significant and represents the largest number of children who are going to be placed in hotels in B.C.

B. Naughton: No. These may be children who have been in previous foster placements that have broken down. They may have been in group home placements that have broken down. Very few of these children would have been on youth agreements or in independent living situations. These are children, generally speaking, who have been in a placement that for whatever reason is no longer functional.

J. Rice: I guess what I’m saying, thinking of Alex…. He’s on his own in the sense that he’s in a hotel room by himself.

B. Naughton: That wasn’t the original intent, although that may be what actually occurred. But obviously, we’ll be in a better position to comment on that at the conclusion of that investigation.

M. Dalton: Looking at figure 1, number of children and youth in care by duration of hotel stay. I guess I really was surprised at how few children didn’t stay longer as far as the number of days.

Your recommendation was that no more than three days…. You didn’t recommend any child staying in a hotel more than three nights. Of that, 114 out of the 131 stays were captured within that, under your recommendation. If you went one more day, to four, it would be 123 out of the 131. That leaves eight staying longer than four, and of that, I’m not even sure how many of those might have been children that might have repeated over a couple of times. I don’t know.

To me, when I look at this, I think that shows a quick response by the ministry. I’m not saying it’s necessary ideal wanting to have children in a hotel, but it does seem to me that children are getting placed into homes quite quickly, after three or four days, if they actually do stay in a hotel.

That’s one factor. What’s happening here…. The fact is that they are getting placed, most of them. I do wonder because…. I have an adult child that did work in a home for a year or two and actually was sometimes in a hotel, stayed with children. I do wonder if sometimes…. How many of these situations that stayed longer — and you’ve alluded to it — are because of the actual safety that they pose, maybe to others who stay at a group home or elsewhere.

Anyway, it’s just my perspective. My comment is that I see quick response; I see that something is happening with these kids. I’m not saying that there are not problems. I think one child…. When you have an extensive stay, unfortunately, it’s difficult — but, I thought, keeping that in perspective with the number of children in care that there are.

If you can comment, I suppose, on the reasons why some of these children are staying longer. There are very few. Is it because of that danger aspect? And maybe other remarks on what I said.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Just the first point. You alluded to a recommendation of about three days. I did not recommend that they only be there for three days. I said it wanted it reported, if it was more than three days, to my office to review the situation.

The view that my staff and I take is that hotel placements are not suitable placements for children.

The duration of the placements. What we found in this period, was, as I said, that six were placed for 11 or more nights, three for 20 or more nights, and at the outer edge
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was 49 nights for Mr. Gervais. He died, so that terminated his hotel stay. In any event, when we think about the…. Is this the sign of a good system, or is it the sign of what? I think we have to be very cautious about what we see about this.

One of the things I come back to as an advocate for children and youth is we have to listen to what the children and youth say about their experience. These cases are different. Not every child and youth has the same experience. A newborn infant going from a hospital to a hotel may not experience a big difference if there’s a loving, caring, supportive person meeting their every need. Different stages will have different needs, so we have to be very careful about we conclude.

The challenge is that in British Columbia we were using hotels. Mr. Gervais’s death came forward, and the suggestion was we were not using hotels. We are using hotels, and we continue to use hotels. The kids who are in the hotels tend disproportionately to be kids who have experienced a lot of trauma and aboriginal kids. So this sense that they may be problematic….

There are different ways to look at it. They may have some very significant trauma and challenging issues that they’re facing, but we shouldn’t put on their shoulders the responsibility for that. We need to have a system that well knows and is aware of the fact that their families and their circumstances need support. There’s a different lens to look at it.

In terms of hotel stay, certainly I did not say that hotels will no longer be used in British Columbia in this joint report. But I feel very strongly that the government should commit to ending them for emergency placements and should have a plan and a date to do that. At this point, when you don’t have a date and you don’t have a plan, these things can spike. Then when they’re not tracked and monitored, they are not worked on.

Now we are working, and the ministry is monitoring it, and I’m very pleased about that. However, I would say that on a weekly basis, we are dealing with a thorny situation: where is someone going to live? That’s an ongoing concern on the advocacy side. The pressures continue to be there.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen. The committee will be looking forward to getting an update after June 1 from the ministry.

J. Thornthwaite (Chair): We have one other item, any other business. I’d just like to mention that there are only two reports from the representative that are outstanding to date, and those ones were just released in the last week or so. One is Approach With Caution: Why the Story of One Vulnerable B.C. Youth Can’t Be Told, and the other one is Implementation of the Plecas Review, Part One: Decision Time. Both of those, I think, have been distributed.

The other work that is required by the committee…. We have a draft committee annual report, which has also been….

Then the outstanding item that we will have to at least begin is the statutory review. I understand that the Clerk will be advising us as to suggested individuals and groups that may want to consult with the committee as we move forward on that statutory review.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Just briefly, we received correspondence yesterday from the Representative for Children and Youth that I requested be sent out to all committee members, and you agreed.

I think it points out, and I feel it points out, a potential gap in an oversight role around permanency plans for children in care when it comes to adoptions. With the concerns pointed out by the Representative for Children and Youth, I think we need to review that letter quickly.

Considering that we also have those two outstanding reports, I’d like to suggest that we have a meeting in June to go over what, I think, is a potential issue with a gap in permanency planning oversight and then also to deal with the two outstanding reports.

D. Barnett: I think that we should leave that with the Chair and the vice-Chair to discuss. See what kind of resolution you can come up with, and get back to us on the issues.

C. James: I’m good with that, as long as we circulate some dates and start looking at dates soon so that people can deal with their June calendars.

Access to on-line versions of the report of proceedings (Hansard)
and webcasts of committee proceedings is available on the Internet.

Chair:	Jane Thornthwaite (North Vancouver–Seymour BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Doug Donaldson (Stikine NDP)
Members:	Donna Barnett (Cariboo-Chilcotin BC Liberal)
	Marc Dalton (Maple Ridge–Mission 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)
	Linda Reimer (Port Moody–Coquitlam BC Liberal)
	Jennifer Rice (North Coast NDP)
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