The committee met at 2:05 p.m.

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good afternoon, Members. As this is the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth for the new third session of the 41st parliament and as there has not yet been a Chair elected to serve the committee, the first item is election of Chair. I’d like to open the floor to nominations to that position.

J. Rice: I nominate that guy up there.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Could you be more specific, please?

N. Simons: Hansard needs to know who you’re talking about.

J. Rice: I’d like to nominate Nick Simons as Chair.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you, Jennifer. Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

Seeing none, I will presume you accept.

N. Simons: Well, I’ll be pleased to.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Then I’ll put the question.

Motion approved.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you. I need a name tag.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I happen to have one.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much.

We need to choose a Deputy Chair. Could I have a nomination for the Deputy Chair?

J. Isaacs: I move Michelle Stilwell.

N. Simons (Chair): Excellent.

Motion approved.

N. Simons (Chair): Glad to have you, Michelle.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): Happy to be here. You didn’t even take other nominations. That was wonderful.

N. Simons (Chair): No, I forgot. Well, I figured there was some sort of cahoots going on.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): That was great. Thank you.

N. Simons (Chair): We’re continuing on the work that we started, and continuity is helpful.

As we all are here, we’re back in Victoria and pleased to be here. We’re looking forward to completing our statutory review.

Today we have a witness, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. I just wanted to briefly introduce Mary Ellen. When elected in 2001, one of the government’s first acts was to eliminate the Children’s Commission and the advocate for children, youth and families. Both had been created on the recommendation of Thomas Gove, who’d conducted a review of the child welfare system following the death of Matthew Vaudreuil.

Without these independent offices, deaths and critical injuries of children were reviewed in-house or by contractors. One such review was a report which I wrote, which resulted in a serious debate, as the government was found to have changed the terms of reference, the content of the report and had delayed the report’s release. The resulting outcry resulted in government appointing Justice Ted Hughes, who made recommendations on how to improve the system. Among his 62 recommendations, No. 1 was to create an independent officer of the Legislature, and No. 2 was to establish a standing committee.

Today I’d like to welcome Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the first Representative for Children and Youth, to provide her views on the statutory review that we’re currently undertaking. Mary Ellen was first appointed in 2006 and reappointed in 2011. In her ten years in the office, she oversaw close to 20,000 advocacy cases and almost 100 reports. Her commitment to the children of the province was unwavering, forceful and essential.

It’s our pleasure, I’m sure — my pleasure, indeed — to welcome Mary Ellen to the committee. Thank you for being here.

Presentations on Statutory Review of
Representative for Children and Youth Act

MARY ELLEN TURPEL-LAFOND

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to everyone. It’s a pleasure to be invited. What I hoped to do was to give a brief set of introductory remarks on my views of the operation of the RCY Act, as the officeholder for a decade, and then share with you a few observations or suggestions as to what, in my respectful view, are areas where the act could be strengthened and improved in the interests of children and families in British Columbia.

[2:10 p.m.]

First of all, you all know — and you’re well into the review; I’ve had a chance to read the briefs that have been submitted thus far — that the act was put together in a fairly hasty fashion in May 2006, after Mr. Hughes did his review of the child welfare system in a review prompted, in part, by the tragic death of the toddler Sherry Charlie.

The act was amended a number of times over the years. In particular, out of the starting gates in 2006 to 2008, there were a number of amendments. I can just relate from my experience that that was a very significant period of time when we were operationalizing the act and seeing where it needed improvements. There were some improvements made that are significant and I hope will be retained.

Initially, when I was appointed as the Representative for Children and Youth, I was also appointed by the Attorney General for British Columbia, Wally Oppal, as the acting child and youth officer. I actually had a dual appointment, both as an independent officer and as the acting child and youth advocate — to both shut down an office and transition into a full, independent office and ensure that there was continuity in terms of documents and other matters but also ensure that there was a reset.

It wasn’t simply a transition. It was a winding down and a starting up. I just flag that because the Chair has highlighted what were some very difficult historical experiences in terms of the history of child advocacy in British Columbia. Many, like the Chair, have been around for a long time in this area. I note that today we’re joined in the gallery by the current Representative for Children and Youth, Bernard Richard — I’m delighted he’s here — but also Alan Markwart, who was a longtime official in the Ministry for Children and Families. He probably has experience beyond anybody in this room.

When we go back to 1995 and before, there was no oversight of the child welfare system in British Columbia. You, Mr. Chair, have just identified that for a long time, internal reviews were conducted inside the ministry. They were not made public.

The death of Matthew Vaudreuil was certainly very significant for the province in 1992, leading to his mother, who pled guilty to manslaughter. There was an internal review that was tabled in the Legislature that was found to be very deficient. Hence, Judge Tom Gove was appointed in 1994 and conducted a thorough public inquiry.

In 1996, the Children’s Commission was established. It investigated deaths, provided some review of advocacy issues for children and youth, and it was disbanded in 2002. Between 2002 and 2005, when the Hon. Ted Hughes was appointed to review the child welfare system, there were many, many challenges. There was an Office for Children and Youth, which was part of the Attorney General’s ministry, but there was, as Mr. Hughes found later, a variety of individuals who had some role with respect to the child-serving system, none of whom really worked together, none of whom were well organized.

There was a lot of difficulty. Particularly, as many of you here who lived through that period will know, there were significant challenges. For instance, at the Coroners Service, literally hundreds of files were collecting dust and not being reviewed, and people didn’t know who did what. The Representative for Children and Youth role, coming out of Mr. Hughes’s incredibly impactful assessment…. It was quite a path-breaking recommendation to create this role with these powers and functions that later found their way into the act.

I think the most important point I wanted to emphasize with you today is that my high-level view is that for the most part, the act has served British Columbia well, with some areas for improvement. It’s served well. It certainly represented a leap forward in legislation, policy and practice. It wasn’t like anything else, really, in the public service domain. A lot depended on the attitude toward the legislation and the context behind the legislation.

In carrying out the role and function, and carefully looking at the terms of the statute and seeking advice and exercising the authorities under the statute over the decade…. I certainly took a very purposeful and contextual approach to that role and felt that underlying the approach I took was a very strong focus on meeting the needs of children and youth. While the language of the statute is about support, inform and advise children and youth about services that might be available, or review instances where there are challenges, I took a very strong approach to it — that there should be a child-and-youth-serving focus in the function.

[2:15 p.m.]

I took that approach, in part, because with the guidance of the select standing committee and carefully preparing and producing annual reports, service plans and a lot of dialogue with the select standing committee over a decade, I received some very clear conversations and feedback to take a strong focus that would put at the forefront the rights of children and youth. So even though the statute itself doesn’t speak to the rights — it speaks to support, advise and inform about services, to conduct advocacy, to conduct investigations and reviews — the work for a decade was really informed by this broader context.

I bring that before you because I think it was somewhat of an informal understanding. Again, I think the role of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth in the statute is a very significant part of the statute. It’s a significant part of that conversation. It’s a significant part of accountability for a representative’s office but also to provide direction.

If you look over the decade, you will see that there is a lot of consensus on taking what I would call a human rights, child-and-youth-focused approach to the statute. The statute was not as directive in that regard, but nevertheless that was the approach.

I think some aspects of exercising powers under the system were challenging. They’re more historical than anything. But any time there is an exercise of a new type of oversight, it can be very uncomfortable. It does shock the system. Certainly, no one was surprised by that, and Mr. Hughes contemplated that it would be an effective, independent oversight agency that might cause shock in the system. That’s not an unhealthy thing. In fact, as the officeholder for a decade, I would say to you that it was a really important part of it.

Making and having comprehensive access to actual information that’s important to be able to support, inform and advise children and youth to be able to produce meaningful, thorough reports is significant. Some systems involving children and families are very reluctant to share information, as an example. The practices evolved through time.

Moving toward a transparent system is very significant. Section 10 of the legislation, which is about information and access, is a very important provision. There are always opportunities to strengthen it. However, I would strongly urge you not to go in the opposite direction, which is to weaken it or go backward.

There was a very good and comprehensive decision of the B.C. Supreme Court on access to information under section 10, which was a decision of Madam Justice Griffin with respect to an application that I brought to the court just to clarify the scope of the statute. That was very well clarified with a good, contextual, purposeful analysis, which is that independent oversight for children and youth needs the greatest and most generous possible access to information to be effective, and that the air of transparency and accountability should guide that.

I certainly would say that having an independent role…. Independent officers are very interesting creatures in the public sector, generally. They’re created by the legislative branch of government, in a sense. They’re appointed by a legislative branch of government.

In the case of the Representative for Children and Youth, you spend most of your time deeply engaged in the trenches with the administrative branch of government, namely the Ministry of Children and Families. And you spend a significant portion of your time with representatives of the executive branch of government, ministers and others, to inform them, to dialogue, sometimes to cajole or to assess their priorities. Then, of course, unlike perhaps some other public officials, there’s a high obligation to be transparent and to report out — reporting to the Legislature, of course, but also to report to the public.

One of the approaches that certainly influenced me as representative — and I think the statute has a lot of strength in this regard — was the need to ensure that there is regular public reporting and that the public reporting focuses on outcomes for children and youth, their actual lived experiences, and that the reporting is accurate.

[2:20 p.m.]

Also, to perform the oversight function of ensuring that the ministries’ reporting — whichever ministry it may be in children services, whether it’s Education, Children and Families or others — was accurate to the extent that it could be verified or confirmed by the representative’s office.

In short, I think it’s extremely important that the representative’s office include sufficient powers and expectations in the legislation, that there be a rigorous approach to that role, that the representatives and the staff be very well informed about all aspects of the services captured within the legislation, that they be able to speak and report with great accuracy and depth in the area and that they be closely engaged with the administrative officials across government. But also continue to have that independence, if you like, and that judgment that might be needed at times as to when information needs to be publicly released and when information doesn’t need to be publicly released.

I note that you had one submission from the Public Guardian and Trustee that spoke to the situation of should there be reports if young people don’t wish to have their reports made public. It’s a very important issue. Certainly, during my time, we never issued reports that young people didn’t want to have made public. However, we still had to complete investigations, disseminate information and sometimes anonymize things, because you have a difficulty with respect to accountability where you can engage in a lot of activity and never report on it.

In fact, this is one of the hazards that we had in British Columbia with the very internalized mechanisms to look at children’s services. There were a lot of incomplete, half-finished internal reviews that, essentially, administrative officials could never see their way through to releasing, in part because they were worried, perhaps, that their own heads would be chopped off as a result, but also because it’s a lot of dispute about: when do you exercise that judgement?

The representative’s office has some very significant provisions in the RCY Act to make determinations about what should be reported on and when it should be reported on. However, it’s very important that there be a requirement to report. Any time offices do work and do not publicly report, it’s a very big concern, an especially very big concern when it affects vulnerable citizens.

I just wanted to say a few words about the core of the legislation, not only coming from Mr. Hughes but also what I would call the spirit and purposeful view of the legislation. I think, in my experience, the members of the select standing committee and the Legislature certainly reflected, in developing the RCY Act, deep compassion and concern for how children and families were served in British Columbia.

That was consistent across all members of the Legislature. I see that as a very clearly woven thread over a decade, also the need to address areas where there had been very clear acknowledgment that public policy or approaches had not worked, where there may have been failures — meaning needing to modernize our approaches to child welfare, to child safety, to children’s well-being, and needing to look more broadly at making sure that there is independent advocacy for the voices of children and youth themselves, that they were listened to.

I think, in practice, the underlying spirit, although it wasn’t expressed explicitly in the RCY Act…. The Hon. Ted Hughes spoke in his report about being an advocate for change itself, an improvement — continuous improvement with a child focus. I think that’s quite significant for us to remember.

Now, the level of monitoring and detail are also important. The powers to audit and review are very significant powers. In some instances, you would think there is some overlap between the role of a representative’s office and other independent officers, whether that be the Auditor, the Ombudsman or Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The attitude that, certainly, I brought to the role was to work collaboratively with other independent officers. I did produce a number of joint reports — one with the Ombudsman on complaints processes, one with the Privacy and Information Commissioner on Internet safety and security for young people, and reports with others where it was possible to kind of work together effectively. So working as a team, when it comes to children and families, is really significant. Collaborative work is valuable.

[2:25 p.m.]

In the end, the Representative for Children and Youth Office is the site that has the responsibility. It’s the site that has the accountability to a standing committee and, also, through the act, to the public.

They need to have acute knowledge of the system and accurate and verifiable public reporting at a high level, which includes having those powers, like powers of inquiry, to deal with investigations and reports and making sure, more broadly, that children’s issues are visible, that the public sees a strong engagement and focus on children, that the issues affecting children are visible to the members of the Legislative Assembly — I respect that they are; all of your constituents, or many of them, have families, and you will be engaged every day — and visible to the public, that you have them placed before you.

It’s not the only place that children’s issues become visible, but the representative’s office must make those issues visible. Certainly, at times when the Ministry for Children and Families, as one ministry, has had a very inadequate performance report for one reason or another, often it’s because the matter has been known for a long time but has not been brought forward and has been sat on for a long time. Generally, my experience is that it doesn’t really help the issue. Not paying attention, not bringing it forward, tends to mean things don’t improve.

When they do come out and get addressed, then generally people are very happy to see that happen. But someone has to key it and prompt it. So the representative’s office has that significant function to do it.

We’ve had almost 12 years of experience under the RCY Act. It’s a necessary…. It has, I would say to you, provided remarkable stability. And it isn’t because of me but because of the staff of the representative’s office that was able to function at a high level. But we had a turnstile of ministers, deputy ministers, projects, makeovers, a children’s budget in 2006 by the former minister Carole Taylor. Then the children’s budget didn’t result in change. We had lots of challenges in British Columbia, not like many other places. But there was a lot of instability.

One of the advantages of having the Representative for Children and Youth as a function is it provided stability. It provided a stable, regular, focused, accountable process to look at the six service lines in the Ministry of Children and Families, but also to begin to report on and put out the issues of children’s outcomes as being areas in which you need to be informed, you need to see measurable progress and to see innovation.

Certainly, I found, in making recommendations and doing work, approximately 70 percent of the recommendations that were made were acted upon. Many of those involved clarifying responsibilities and sometimes creating new entities. After the investigation into the death of the Schoenborn children happened, there was a creation…. Minister Mary McNeil was the Minister of Children and Families at the time. The minister and the Premier, together, pushed very hard in response to that and created the provincial office of domestic violence, as an example, and placed that office in the Ministry of Children and Families.

I speak about that because, really, when we were doing that work on domestic violence homicides, which we continue to need to engage with in British Columbia, when you look at it across government, the one area that, certainly from a representative’s perch, was missing was there’s no children’s plan in British Columbia. There’s no cohesive plan across all silos of ministries. In fact, even within MCFD, there wasn’t a cohesive understanding of their six service lines that we have now.

The stability of looking at a system suggesting and working for change collaboratively is very important. Is it the full answer? No, it isn’t, but it’s a very significant piece. Stability is important because things need to be measured over time, and they need to be stayed focused on.

Even today I’m not in the role as representative, but I do look at the matters. I do think: “Well, there’s that provincial office of domestic violence. It’s still in the Ministry of Children and Families. Is it serving children and families? Is it in the justice system? And oh, there isn’t a ministry for women. There was a ministry for women at one time in the government of British Columbia.” Where are those issues around domestic violence?

Even today, although that office was created, I would suggest to you there still is some natural tension and confusion around where the roles and responsibilities are.

Child welfare was changed to allow for emotional harm and greater action in the area of domestic violence. An office was created. We’re not quite sure how everyone works together.

[2:30 p.m.]

Again, we look at cases. We examine them. We make changes. But government’s function and how it’s organized…. Is it effective to keep at the forefront the needs of children who are being raised in families where there’s a regular or frequent dose of violence or aggression? It’s very significant. It’s one of the biggest issues for child welfare in British Columbia, and it continues to be a big issue.

Creating a provincial office of domestic violence is a good thing. But what does it do? How does it move forward? The representative has that ability to not just make recommendations but to track them and look at themes of deeply vulnerable children and also areas where British Columbians continue to ask: “Is it working?” So the ability to neutrally look at issues, bring them forward and allow change to occur and evaluation to happen.

I certainly think the Representative for Children and Youth Act is well constructed in terms of not making the representative’s staff a substitute for the provincial director of child welfare, who has to make decisions in the best interests of children, but have a good, strong advocacy dialogue with the provincial director of child welfare.

I would say to you that I think child welfare continues to be challenging for many British Columbians, particularly Indigenous British Columbians. Probably the broadest scope of any legislative powers in the province is in the CF and CS Act — the power to knock on a door and remove a child. Then begins a process that’s a very bureaucratic process.

We are still dealing with very significant court delays. I think in 100 percent of presentation hearings, the ministry is supported to remove a child, and then sometimes things drift forever. For families to get support and for children to get support after that happens…. It’s not as if the ministry is the big, bad ministry. They’re not. But with that type of enormous power that exists in the CF and CS Act…. It’s unlike anything else.

The access to information powers in the CF and CS Act — to get someone’s health records, to get lots of information, their employment records, to present themselves at the home and remove a child…. These are the most wide powers of any statute in British Columbia. Considering the checks and balances around that has been nominal. There have been very few reviews of the CF and CS Act in the more than 20 years since it was modernized.

The concern has been a lot of informal resolution of matters. Files remain open a long time. People don’t know where they stand. I’m sure everyone around the table has a few constituents that are grappling with these issues.

The representative’s office has a very significant role. While it may be effective to prime the system and support people, the child welfare legislation continues to have the broadest set of powers available. Of course, families are deeply vulnerable — often financially, often by marginalization. They’re not close to court points. They’re in rural points. They’re on reserve. They haven’t got a lot of capacity to access legal services and respond to cases on legal terms.

Defusing conflict, peace-keeping and keeping children’s needs at the forefront are very important. Frequently, the representative’s act, if you were to read it…. If you came from Mars and read it, you’d say: “Whose side are they on here? Is it families? Is it government? What?” The point of the matter is that the representative’s act should not be about sides.

Coming to what I would like to suggest to you are a few key recommendations — and then being happy to answer any questions you might have. A couple of things. One is: what was missing in the representative’s legislation?

Although we took it as a context and attempted to work with it, and we worked informally with the standing committee over the years, we were missing a very clear human rights lens. Formally grounding the representative’s legislation in a proper human rights framework is really significant for a number of reasons. I would suggest to you the work has already been going on in that framework. So it’s not a massive adjustment.

However, clearly and explicitly recognizing, for instance, the UN convention on the rights of the child. As you know, in 1989, it came into being. In December 1991, Canada ratified it. It’s the most ratified convention in the world. It’s a very significant part of the architecture of how we think about meeting the needs of children.

[2:35 p.m.]

Some of the major pieces of work that are the most durable and that were created during my tenure as representative…. The two reports I did with Dr. Perry Kendall, the provincial health officer, Growing Up in B.C., were comprehensive looks at how our children are doing in B.C. Dr. Kendall and I took a rights approach, which was the right to learn — how are we doing in education? — the right to be connected to your family — how are we doing with children living out of the parental home? — the right to belong to your community.

We took concepts inspired by the UN declaration because these are very universally used. They also create measures, when we did Growing up in B.C., where we could actually look at how we’re doing with other jurisdictions and other nations. UNICEF does regular reporting, for instance.

I would suggest to you that you have a prime opportunity to bring a stronger human rights lens into the Representative for Children and Youth Act. I am mindful of the fact that there has been a public consultation on creating a provincial human rights office, possibly even a new officer of the Legislative Assembly. I know there’s been a discussion paper. I appreciate that nothing has been formally introduced, but I certainly have followed, with interest, the deliberations and the words of the Attorney General of British Columbia on that.

That’s an important initiative that may come to pass at some point in the future. But I don’t think that the issues about human rights of children, like the UNCRC, the recognition of the United Nations declaration on the rights of the child…. These fundamental human rights concepts should be referenced, in my respectful submission to you, in the body of the RCY Act.

How that might coordinate with an independent human rights commission, if it was to be a creature of the Legislature down the road, is important. I have looked a lot at jurisdictions where you have both a human rights commission and a children’s commissioner. They do some very brilliant work together, which would be very consistent with some of the needs in British Columbia. That would be an ideal thing.

The requirement to promote human rights of children, the right to safety — to not just look at effective services…. Those are areas where improvements…. And I highly support the brief that has been filed by the current officeholder, the Representative for Children and Youth, in that regard. I think those are very sound recommendations, and I would second those and say that, in effect, it really will not be a massive adjustment, because that has informed the work under the guidance of the select standing committee for some time.

I do think that this opportunity is significant, because when I look, also, at the advocacy…. I had 17,000 or more advocacy cases. A lot of the dialogue with government, with officials and others, related to a particular provision of the CF and CSA, section 71, which is: what are the rights of children in care? It’s important. It’s probably not very adequately prepared. It’s certainly not embraced entirely by children and youth in care, who feel that that’s not a very adequate way to address their rights and their needs. Nevertheless, it’s there and was worked with very appropriately.

A broader human rights lens, I think, would help, because human rights help keep us focused on a child- and youth-serving system as opposed to just focusing on deficiencies that may be there — and accessing services. That’s also important, but the big picture of what we are doing is very important.

Again, I would say, in the feedback I had from children and youth in my decade, having children’s summits, including working exclusively and actively on youth engagement and so forth, young people repeatedly came back and said they wanted a stronger ability to organize their conversations about their rights and needs, and to be heard. They were very effective when they did that.

I think of Fresh Voices from Far Places, which was an immigrant and refugee summit that we had with the Vancouver Foundation, which led to a lot of positive work by a group of immigrant and refugee youth, over a period of about six years, leading to many positive changes, through having real empowerment of youth voice and respect for their right to be heard and their right to be heard by senior officials. I particularly think of the Education Ministry, where they made multiple changes.

I think the recognition of the UNCRC in the legislation and possibly…. My respectful submission would be that, as part of its annual service plan, the Representative for Children and Youth may be required to look at what activities are geared toward the promotion and understanding of the rights of children — so to place it as a deliverable, if you like, in the representative’s office. I appreciate another office may come along and have a broad human rights responsibility, but it is important.

[2:40 p.m.]

I don’t have much time today to speak about…. It’s not just children in care, children and youth with special needs, children and youth with complex health needs. Certainly, in my time as representative, on the special needs and developmental disability area, I think I dealt with three or four different administrative leads — for instance, CLBC. This was an area that was often punted around a little bit, sometimes like a hot potato. I think the Chair would know that very well. Many of us were just helping families to try and get through this process. It was almost impossible to navigate.

When you had that sort of right to reasonable accommodation — the right to be understood, the right for a young person with special needs to have their needs met and have reasonable modifications made to meet their needs in a school system, for instance, or in other places — that seemed to open the door. So the human rights dimension can be very helpful, and it moves it from an idea of a sort of charity, a sort of 19th-century concept, to a modern concept.

The final point I will make is a very difficult area for you to grapple with, and that’s the area of Indigenous people and the Representative for Children and Youth Act and services for Indigenous children and families. You know well about the challenges that Indigenous children and families face. Certainly as representative, I took a very strong approach to that area because it’s such a significant area of need. But I also did something that was really not necessarily required by the act but, I would say to you, should be required by the act because of where we are today.

All of the work that was engaged with Indigenous organizations, whether they were political organizations or service organizations…. As representative, I entered into a memorandum of understanding and agreement with each of them, which was my way of working a collaborative relationship. I recognized that they had rights to self-government. They had rights to determine their children’s ongoing cultural attachment to their nations — for the First Nations, in particular, and for the Métis.

I entered into relationships with the First Nations Education Steering Committee, the First Nations Health Authority — all the large social-serving organizations. The purpose of that was to have a proper, structured relationship.

Now, I did have and see an opinion that said provincial laws, like the RCY Act, apply to everybody in British Columbia, and if First Nations agree or not, it doesn’t matter. But I didn’t think that was a healthy approach. I really felt that a recognition-based approach, recognizing that Indigenous people not only have a stake in these issues but have been so poorly served in the past that the representative’s office will not be legitimate, in the views of Indigenous British Columbians, unless there are really strong, formal arrangements in place….

Now, that wasn’t mandated anywhere in the legislation, but I do think you should seriously consider at least one amendment to the statute that identifies the requirement that the representative’s office does two things. One, establish collaborative relationships with Indigenous governments and service agencies.

I say that because there are 20-some delegated aboriginal agencies. The Ministry for Children and Families will say: “Those are our agencies.” Indigenous people will say: “No, they just happen to be Indigenous agencies with some delegated staff.” Most days they can agree.

The way I viewed it was: it’s an Indigenous service agency, and you have a collaboration. There should be some kind of a requirement to enter into a proper working relationship so that a whole swath of Indigenous children are the subject of good work together, collaborative work.

The other component is that it’s very important that the representative’s staff — and Mr. Hughes saw this — have a strong Indigenous set of competencies to work with Indigenous children, youth and families and not work with them in a sort of colonial, old-school way of, “We’re going to tell you what to do,” but actually work with people in a very positive way that accepts that they also have a unique set of rights.

I know British Columbia has endorsed UNDRIP, for instance. It’s a very significant framework for children and youth. The recent Human Rights Tribunal fourth compliance order that was issued by the government of Canada doesn’t apply to B.C., necessarily, but it applies to Canada.

[2:45 p.m.]

It used UNDRIP as a focus because there are some strong provisions. UNCRC and UNDRIP are both very significant, but requiring there be an operational agreement with Indigenous organizations is important. Otherwise — and I’ve read the briefs that you received — it’s conceivable that Indigenous organizations and nations may decide that they don’t want to participate with an independent process.

I think that would be unfortunate, because one of the things I’ve seen with the select standing committee is that despite a lot of personal differences and value differences that people from different political parties have, we can all work together on children. And I know Indigenous organizations have a strong value of keeping the children at the centre. If we don’t show that degree of respect and have memoranda of an agreement and really work on that, it will be problematic.

I think it’s appropriate and it’s respectful to have a requirement that the representative’s office gain the respect of Indigenous organizations and governments, and work on that basis. If they haven’t got it, they haven’t got it. They can tell you that. But they should be required to have that.

Of course, we know, with MCFD history, they really don’t have the respect of Indigenous bodies and entities. There’s important tripartite work going on now, I know. The premise of it is that we don’t want Indigenous people saying: “We don’t want the ministry to continue down the path of failed public policy for Indigenous people.”

The representative’s office is an independent office of the Legislature, but it needs to reflect this very significant time.

I’ll just end there and entertain any questions that you might have.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much, Mary Ellen. We have a few minutes for questions, and I see some of us are scribbling notes. I appreciate your input and your views.

Do I see any questions?

Sonia, go ahead.

S. Furstenau: Mary Ellen, I want to start around the discussion of domestic violence and the role that that seems to play, rather enormously, in a lot of the decisions that are being made by the Ministry of Children and Families.

Today is Moose Hide Campaign Day. We stood on the steps. This is a recognition that, ultimately, putting domestic violence in a category and then cleaving everything away from it isn’t really the solution that we need to be working towards.

I’m wondering if you can speak a bit more to a path forward that ultimately doesn’t punish mothers and children for domestic violence that they might be subject to and that finds a way to move towards a much more effective and inclusive way of dealing with this problem.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, it’s a good example of what Ted Hughes talked about when he proposed a representative’s office. You have all sorts of people doing things, but are they in the same canoe heading in the same direction?

I just make the observation that as someone who recommended we have a provincial office of domestic violence and pushed that it be created, it was hard to know where to locate it, because nobody really owned the issues of the impact on children or domestic violence. We kind of didn’t do very much about it for a long time.

Then we created an office, and we placed an office outside the justice system, in the Ministry for Children and Families. We’ve never really advertised the leadership of that office to hire someone independently, but in any event it’s there. The roles…. It’s kind of collaborating behind the scenes, but we don’t really know who’s doing what.

Should there be prosecutions? What is emotional harm? How are Indigenous peoples affected by this? Are there adequate supports for families and children that are grappling with violence? Are we responding to that? These are critical issues.

My concern is we kind of bounce things around. We don’t have a ministry for women. We have a Ministry for Children and Families. The provincial office of domestic violence is there. But then we have a Solicitor General, and we have an Attorney General. We have Health.

It comes back to a very core point that I bring back to you, which is one of the reasons why the representative’s office provides stability. It’s because it comes back to that issue of: what’s the children’s plan across government?

[2:50 p.m.]

Children are affected by domestic violence at school. Their health is affected — their mental health and physical health. If a parent is in the child welfare system, there’s huge trauma, just in and of the child welfare system, on the child. How do we deal with that? Well, we pretty much silo it still.

We’re not there yet. There’s a lot of work to be done. Just having a recommendation, creating an office without creating the integrated work…. It’s going to take some time and some real, serious dialogue, but I worry about the ping-ponging: it’s here; it’s there; it’s nowhere. Does it have a children’s lens? Is there a kind of accountability around the children’s lens?

This requires a lot of work. Our representative’s office needs to be on the key presenting issues like violence, addictions — key challenges that families have — and needs to continue to be pushing it, not just in one door but governmentwide.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen.

T. Wat: Mary Ellen, I really appreciate your presentation, and I really appreciate your suggestion to reach a collaborative relationship with Indigenous servicing agencies, because the Indigenous community does have a distinct culture, the same as many other ethnic communities. In the event that this is included in the act, what does it really mean to the ministry in their future working relationship with the Indigenous servicing agencies?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The ministry doesn’t know what it means. They’re in a period of transition. The Ministry of Children and Families has been in this period of transition for a long time.

The Indigenous confidence in the ministry has been very low. There has been the Sixties Scoop. There’s been failed policy. Yet they don’t negotiate jurisdiction. That’s the Attorney General. They’re a service-focused ministry. They can enter service agreements, but actually they just do child welfare every day. In the ministry, one branch is looking at Indigenous child welfare, but the other five branches are just doing the same thing they’ve always done. So you have to really have a substantive look at where the relationships are with Indigenous people.

Obviously, just yesterday in the federal House, the Prime Minister made some very strong statements about recognizing Indigenous people’s rights and the right to develop and control family policy and address the cultural continuity for Indigenous children. It’s absolutely bedrock. It’s already been recognized, but we’re dealing with a very old construct with our ministry. Again, the CF and CSA has some provisions about Aboriginal children and families. The Family Law Act has some provisions. The Adoption Act has some provisions. None of them are up to date.

Where does the representative fit in? The representative has got to be an office that promotes a positive focus on children but can work through these transitions in a good way. Keep the focus on children. Sometimes political agreements are made and people are happy, but if children aren’t well served, it will come back.

It’s keeping the focus on children as people go through transition, a strong Indigenous obligation to be mindful of the rights of Indigenous people — UNDRIP is a very significant framework for Indigenous People and for Canada — but also to have collaborative relationships and report on it, and maybe also to assess whether the government is making progress in realizing those relationships with Indigenous people to the benefit of Indigenous children.

The representative’s office has to monitor. My experience in the role over a decade was that people become very nervous and they don’t produce anything. It’s a hard thing to step up on, but actually staying focused on children allows you to step up.

It’s all the more reason why we need an independent representative’s office: to do good work collaboratively, but also to engage the standing committee. The committee is reported to and has the best information and opportunity to advance this in a good way so that in another 20 or 30 years, they don’t look back on this era and say: “Well, we had a committee, but it really didn’t do anything. It didn’t play a positive role.” We have to play that positive role. Tweaking the legislation to do that I don’t think is a massive step, but it could be very helpful.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks, Mary Ellen.

L. Throness: I want to thank you for appearing today. You obviously have a great store of knowledge from which you draw, and we appreciate that.

I wanted to talk about the emphasis of the office. All public policy is a matter of emphasis. You would never ignore one thing and do another thing. You always do less of one thing and more of another thing.

[2:55 p.m.]

The emphasis of the office will impact budgets and person-years and the time that staff spend on different things. I’m thinking of your emphasis on human rights and the rights of youth. I always think that the office should have more of an emphasis on children than on youth, because children are more vulnerable than youth. It should have more of an emphasis on protection of those children versus the rights of those children.

Could you comment on that matter of emphasis?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think your comments are valuable. I think we probably would agree more than disagree. I don’t think it’s an either-or. There isn’t protection versus human rights.

The way I view it, under the UN convention on the rights of the child, as it’s been implemented and brought down into the best interests of the child assessment under our statutes in B.C., children have a right to be safe. Sometimes we talk about relative safety. Sometimes children remain in risky situations with a risk reduction service plan. They may have a parent that’s dealing with addictions, but they’re still at home, and there’s a plan.

The right to be safe, though, really keeps the focus on the child, and rights come with responsibilities. I was involved when we changed the Family Law Act, and we got rid of child custody. Children have a right to have their needs met, and the parents have a responsibility to meet their needs. Of course, grandparents and others need to have access and support for children.

We shifted things a bit in that direction. Protection is important when you talk about safety, absolutely — core public safety. Child welfare does safety, but there are more comprehensive issues around the well-being of children. If we want to prevent the ongoing, for instance, removal of Indigenous children, we need to focus on things that will prevent their maltreatment and will address the neglect they experience. It’s two sides.

The responsibility of the grownups, like us, is to make sure we understand what it is to think about that right to be safe in our province. Again, I come back to the point that we don’t have a comprehensive children’s plan. Other jurisdictions came out with sort of minimal developmental milestones for children: their safety, their education, their well-being.

We’ve got a lot of strengths in British Columbia. Protection is something that we sometimes do okay. Sometimes we get it wrong. But children being safe, being heard, attention being paid to their circumstances tends to be the focus of positive work. When you get, “We are protecting,” and we’re not talking…. Everyone has a duty to protect children, but we also have a duty to support families that are challenged. The mother who is dealing with family violence may have challenges protecting her child from the family violence because she can’t control the behaviour of her partner. Society has a duty to support the mom, and it will support the child.

Some of our child welfare concepts are very narrow. I would just say to you that the human rights component gives a more fulsome appreciation of that dynamic. Ultimately, it’s important that children be the ones that speak.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen.

R. Singh: Thank you so much. I was just listening to you when you were talking about the colonial approach that the ministry had. Do you think, with all the work that you did and the recommendations that you made, any change has come into that attitude?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think for sure. The issue is the public awareness. I think, again, when you’re looking at the Representative for Children and Youth Act…. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission made 94 calls to action. The first six have to do with child welfare. Those are really significant.

The work of the representative’s office was part of pushing that and supporting that and making more visible the experiences of Indigenous children and others. I think these things are important to change, but it’s also important that the statute stays….

You don’t want your statute that governs your function to be looking in a rear-view mirror at the past. You want it to be here, but you also want it to prompt something in the future. What you want to prompt in the future is that we get some of these things on a better foundation. Maybe we knew there were problems, but we weren’t quite sure what to do about it.

[3:00 p.m.]

Eventually, the buck has to stop somewhere, and people have to do the work, right? The hard conversation has to happen about: is this working? Is it not working?

I think on the issues about the more colonial approaches…. The Ministry of Children and Families is operating under the CF and CSA which, by their account today, applies to all children everywhere without reservation and causes a lot of distress and grief for Indigenous children. So they’re changing. Even they are changing. But I think, again, as the Chair will know well from his own background, sometimes what happens in the ministry for children is that things change, and they think they’ve changed it, but they actually never pinned down their policy regulation or their own legislation. Then all of a sudden, boom, it’s in a court.

We saw this with the Adoption Act. It’s in a court. This Court of Appeal for British Columbia says that the provincial director of adoption has no authority outside the jurisdiction of B.C., and therefore we’re going to void 300 adoptions in five minutes. It’s not that we haven’t been saying to them for years: “You have a problem with your Adoption Act. It’s got to be addressed. This is a gaping hole.”

The issue is really staying on top of it. Children and family issues do not receive attention easily. They must be focused on. So the representative’s role is partially to keep the system primed, to support reform. It’s not an opposition role. But children and families and human rights and Indigenous peoples’ situation have come a long distance since 2006, when the act was first passed.

The only Indigenous references in the RCY Act are very outdated, when you look at them. The Indigenous provisions of the CF and CSA are outdated. Section 43 of the Adoption Act is outdated. “Best interests of the children” test — I mean, there’s….

We’re into a period of sweeping change. Change happens on the ground, but then it’s not reflected. But then all of a sudden, there’s a shock that we forgot to actually do the work. I think we’re sort of a little bit sleepwalking through that type of period now. Everyone is in this reconciliation era, but we actually haven’t aligned the statutes and the process, including the RCY Act, with the needs of the current period or the future.

S. Furstenau: You spoke of the enormous power of the ministry, and you talked about very few checks and balances. Could you elaborate on that a little bit and speak to any role that you think you could have in addressing that deficit?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think it’s just really important to recognize that the Representative for Children and Youth Act, by having section 10, access to information, means that when a citizen is in a crisis with the Ministry of Children and Families, they have somewhere to go. When I talked about the stability, the 17,000 cases for a decade spared a lot of…. It made life easier, I think, for the ministry, because we had a very formal way. We had access to information and so forth, but it also revealed the fact that the same themes kept coming back, which was that there would be….

Removals are easy. You remove a child, and then suddenly they don’t go back easily. The “least intrusive measures” concept of: “Can we have a family placement? Can we have a kinship placement…?” No. Suddenly you’ve got a removal, and you can’t unwind it.

I remember just one case where we had a homicide. A mother was murdered, and we had a couple of children that could be placed with the mom’s sister. There were a lot of assessments required. I think the kids were in care for 18 months, stranger foster care, when there was a suitable family placement.

I think I lost count at 73 days, but I think I called every single day for 73 days to debate the issue with the Ministry of Children and Families. I know they were like: “Stop phoning us.” I’d be: “Well, I’m sorry. That’s my job, and the family needs to have this resolved.” It wasn’t that I was telling them what to do; it was that we were waiting forever for a decision. It was sort of a slam dunk in my mind.

Yes, the children were eventually placed, but they spent a long period of time in stranger foster care after a domestic violence homicide. Hopefully they’ll move along in life, but these can be really hard cases.

Really knowing what’s going on, and really having the conversation, doesn’t always go up the chain of command. But the representative has to be hands-on. As we’ve seen in the past in British Columbia, British Columbians expect government officials — whether it’s an independent officer, whether it’s a minister, whether it’s a bureaucrat — to get involved and deal with cases. If you don’t deal with it, they show you the exit. That’s certainly been my experience. They’re pretty feisty in expecting results.

[3:05 p.m.]

The Representative for Children and Youth Act is maybe okay, but it could be stronger. The challenges are of, for instance, enormous court delays, where families want their children back, but they’re waiting in Quesnel for four years, or whatever. These are things that…. Certainly, I would lose sleep at night, saying that this is unacceptable. But you can sometimes lose your nerve and your push, so the independent representative has to keep evaluating that and bringing it forward.

The power under the CFCSA…. The reason the independent office was created, in part, was as a bulwark against that power. I think probably that statute will be reviewed, and they’ll find better ways to balance that, because it is not really in tune with the times, and it leads to a lot of conflict.

Frankly, a lot of families will call and say: “I’m sorry, but I’ve lost my child.” They’ve even put their children in voluntary care for a short period, and they can’t get the child back later. Hence begins a shutdown bureaucratic process that’s very unsatisfactory.

I wish we didn’t have to have that type of push and pull, but I can tell you that without it, things would not get resolved. There’s no incentive to resolve things in the CFCSA, so you’re stuck in limbo.

N. Simons (Chair): Is there any way of remending the Representative for Children and Youth Act to address that specifically, or do we have to go and do a review of the CFCS Act?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think it’s important. I mean, the role of the representative does touch upon all these designated services, which include mental health and youth justice, etc. Some people have an attitude that child welfare is just something too hard to get involved in. Well, child welfare…. This is what part of the job is. I think the function of the representative…. I think it’s important to note that the representative’s office itself has to be responsive to citizens. You have to promote it.

Again, I would say…. People may think I’m somewhat maladjusted, but I had 17,000 cases in ten years, and I was very discouraged that I didn’t have 75,000 cases. There was only so much I could do. I knew there were many, many families who needed the support, but they didn’t know the office. I had an office in Prince George, in Burnaby and in Victoria. There are hundreds of places that never got the representative’s time, or it was a telephone call, or whatever.

I’m not saying we need to build an empire. That’s not wise. But there isn’t enough support for the families that are in the child welfare system, and the young people also, that call and say: “I need to get out of this family home. There’s violence every night, and I need a break.” That responsiveness is a problem.

The role should be there, certainly, under section 6 — support, inform and advise. I think if there’s a better human rights lens to it that pays particular attention on the right to be safe and the right to be connected to your family…. Those are like two sides of the same coin.

The dialogue…. When you deal with child welfare, say to people, “Things are not going well in your family right now, but we’re going to get it, keep it. Family is forever, and you will keep your family,” not, “We are going to decide who your family is now,” which is the harsh world of child welfare. Certainly, in my bigger-picture world that I come from, nobody gets to tell me who’s in my family, and I’m sure nobody gets to tell any of you around the table who is in your family. So we need, probably, to have a little bit more of a child-focused approach, which is: everybody’s here to support you, some people more today than there can be tomorrow.

The representative has to represent those values, not that there aren’t very good people working in child welfare in British Columbia. It’s just that they’re busy. Cases get lost, and people don’t get served well. That’s a critical piece.

The act, on section 6 and the human rights lens, can try and keep that focus on children because again, as everyone around the table will know, sometimes adults start fighting. It gets bigger and louder, everybody gets entrenched, and we forget that, actually, if we could just stop and focus on the kids, we probably would be able to find a way forward. They probably even have a good idea about how we could find a way forward.

N. Simons (Chair): Sonia, did you want to follow up? I think Laurie did too.

I’m always interested in seeing how the representative’s office could continue to fine-tune their role. I know that there was a report that was issued that talked about the potential end of certain functions of the representative’s office, which I think has been dismissed pretty readily.

[3:10 p.m.]

I’m not talking about mission creep, but I’m interested in your views on the age over which the representative has jurisdiction, and where that should be or where the cut-offs could be — in an ideal world, even, if we need to go there. We obviously recognize, as Laurie pointed out, that we have to prioritize. What are your views on that particular aspect of that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think I was pretty clear, as representative, and I would continue to have the view that the age should go to 24. But foster care itself should be extended or in some arrangement. Young people are not shown to the curb at 19 and told: “Go on your way, and good luck.”

I think that the representative’s mandate should go to that, particularly for key areas: special needs, it already was extended; foster care; agreements with young adults should probably be clearly extended.

In terms of the role, I think the biggest area where, in my experience, I could not serve but the services were needed — there was another war going on in that field — was the area of education. We have 55,000 children and youth with the designation of special needs of some kind within the education system. What they get or don’t get to meet their right to grow and learn is a very significant issue.

There were all kinds of other things happening in the education sector over the decade I was there, ultimately resolved by the Supreme Court of Canada. There’s been a whole new investment happening in education, which is positive. But the children and youth with special needs, especially the very acute needs — the major behavioural designation with kids that are not in school, kids that can’t get their complex health needs met…. That piece of it is a very big piece of work. But I do think the representative’s office should be weighing in on it.

The use of restraints on children with special needs in schools is something that was brought to me repeatedly. I was out of mandate. I couldn’t deal with it. I would refer it to the Ombudsman or elsewhere. But the real detailed investigations were never completed in that field.

Those are practices which are really important to look at, because they impact the development of children. So the education side is one that I would certainly commend to you to consider. Obviously, there are budget and other implications of that. But I think a sensible plan to address the children who are designated as special needs, who may require that same support, is important.

It’s just very specialized advocates need to know education, because education is another key service area. Again, we have a lot of strength in the education system as well, but we have a lot of very harried parents and caregivers.

N. Simons (Chair): I don’t see any other questions, so I would like to take this opportunity to both thank you and wish you a very happy birthday, I believe.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Oh, yes. Isn’t this a wonderful way to spend your birthday?

N. Simons (Chair): It’s almost a party. Just missing the cake. But we’ve got some celery and carrots back there.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much for being here and for your input. We appreciate it.

We’ll go in recess for a few minutes.

The committee recessed from 3:13 p.m. to 3:22 p.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): That was an interesting presentation from Mary Ellen.

Deliberations

N. Simons (Chair): Now we have specific items to go through, remaining items that we haven’t really….

Interjection.

N. Simons (Chair): Before we do that, it’s traditional that we go in camera. So I need a motion to go in camera.

Thank you, Michelle.

The committee continued in camera from 3:22 p.m. to 4:02 p.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you, everybody, for being here. Excellent discussions. Really a lot of progress made.

Thanks very much, Alayna and Kate, for everything.

Can I have a motion to adjourn, please? Joan moved, and seconded by Jennifer.

The committee adjourned at 4:02 p.m.