The committee met at 6:40 p.m.

[J. Sims in the chair.]

J. Sims (Chair): Good evening, everyone. My name is Jinny Sims, and I’m the MLA for Surrey-Panorama and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth.

I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting this evening on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peo­ple, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

The purpose of our meeting this evening is to receive updates from the Representative for Children and Youth on her investigations work and recommendations moni­toring. In addition to the representative and her staff, we are also joined today by Deb Foxcroft and Judy Wilson, who are engaged as cultural advisers on the investigation.

Deb has kindly offered to open our meeting with a prayer.

Over to you, Deb.

D. Foxcroft: First of all, I just need to introduce myself. I’m Deb Foxcroft. [nuučaan̓uɫ was spoken] is my traditional name. I’m from the c̓išaaʔatḥ First Nation in Port Alberni. I’m a mother, I’m a wife, I’m a grandmother, I’m a sister, and I’m a proud nuučaan̓uɫ-c̓išaaʔatḥ woman.

n̓aas, Creator, Great Spirit, I want to just acknowledge the territory where we’re doing this important work, the lək̓ʷəŋən people, the Songhees and Esquimalt, and acknowledge the ancestors of this land where we’re doing this very important work.

I just wanted to say I am very honoured to be here. I’m hoping that this report and this information will bring peace to the little ten-year-old boy that we’ve been talking about. I just wanted to acknowledge that here.

ƛeekoo ƛeekoo. [nuučaan̓uɫ was spoken]. All my relations, čuu.

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you very much.

Now I’m going to turn it over to the Representative for Children and Youth for a presentation.

Update from
Representative for Children and Youth

INVESTIGATIVE AND REVIEW WORK

J. Charlesworth: Thank you very much.

Deb, thank you very much for your opening and starting us in a good way.

We’re very fortunate to have Deb and Judy with us as cultural advisers. We’ve actually been gathering today and will continue to gather tomorrow to talk about the learning through the sacred story work, the investigation. Having Judy and Deb join us from their home communities was a treat for us all this evening.

I’d also like to introduce…. You know Samantha Cocker well, the deputy representative.

John Yakielashek, whom you probably have not met before, at least in person, is from the Kelowna area. John came down for our two days of work and is the executive director for reviews and investigations.

You will hear shortly from Jennifer Dreyer, whom you’ve met before, the executive director for systemic advocacy, First Nations, Métis and Inuit research.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging that our office works on behalf of communities across this beautiful province and that we have the privilege of working on the lands of 204 nations and are grateful for their hospitality and the warm welcome that we receive and the enduring reciprocal relationships that we’ve been able to build with the communities and with the young people and their families across this province.

I’m joining you today with a few hats on — I’m just starting, and I’m getting emotional — as a fierce advocate for young people in this province, in my role as the representative, as a mom and as a person whose heart is hurting in a way that, frankly, I’ve never experienced. We have spent today talking about a very precious child. So it’s very alive for me right now.

[6:45 p.m.]

In the slides that we have offered you today…. I draw your attention to the face of a little boy. This is actually not a photograph of the little boy that we’re speaking of but of a child who’s very similar to him and who is at the centre of our hearts. We’re choosing not to show you a photograph of him. We do not yet have the family’s permission to do so, and we have to protect his identity to mitigate future harms to his family and community.

The face of this little boy has many characteristics of the little boy that we care deeply about. In a good way, we have to start by saying a little bit about who he was. It’s important that we centre our precious young people.

This little guy was a great friend, an avid soccer player, a whiz at Minecraft. He loved Archie comics and monster trucks. He was a keen student, a tender and loving brother. Even though he was born with complex health needs that would have defeated the spirit of so many of us, he was a boy who was described as having extraordinary resilience.

A very serious heart condition didn’t stop him from being out on the soccer field and attending class with what his teachers described as a true vigour to learn. Even through his abuse, he showed a tenacity and an extra­ordinary will to live.

He loved to laugh and cared for others, like his little sister, who he would stop and hug in the hall. She described him lacing his fingers through hers when she was sad.

This soccer field is where this boy should have been playing. Instead of being at the soccer field in the final chapter of his life…. Playtime for him is described in a court judgment that described 400 hours of video recordings — recordings captured by his caregivers that illustrated that this beautiful sweet boy was thoroughly abused.

I’m here to share with you information about what we have been learning. As I’ve mentioned before, we’re actually weaving three strands together into one. I’m going to briefly talk about each one of those.

First of all, our sacred story investigation is a typical kind of investigation, but we’re trying to do that in a new way. I’ll speak about that in a moment.

The second strand in this braid is our systemic review. You can’t do this kind of work and not say: “Well, what needs to change? Why is this happening? Why does this happen over and over?”

We’re doing a systemic review, but we can’t do that alone. So our circle is getting ever larger in doing engagement work with a vast array of people. There will be thousands who will have contributed to this by the time we complete our work.

Most significantly, we are being guided by seven laws that have been gifted to us by Deb, Judy and our third cultural adviser, Hereditary Chief Wedlidi Speck, who couldn’t be with us today, and by Indigenous method­ologies.

That’s what we are braiding together. Let’s talk a little bit about the first one, the first strand, which is our sacred story harvest.

I want to speak very briefly about our approach. We have tried very much to decolonize the typical approach to investigations. This family has already been through a tremendous amount. As you may be aware, there were criminal proceedings. The perpetrators of the violence that ended this child’s life were sentenced last June. A tremendous amount has already been in the media. Also, the family has been subjected to a tremendous amount through that.

We felt it was really important to do our own work in decolonizing our approach. There are many facets to the way in which we’re doing that, including having the amazing cultural advisers, having a strong circle of advisers, half of whom are Indigenous and with a deep understanding of the impact of colonization. That’s a very important part of our work and how we engage with families, etc.

The other thing that’s important is curiosity over judgment and learning over fault-finding. Frankly, even if I was about trying to find fault, there is no smoking gun in this situation. There are many people. It was a collective failure on the part of many. I won’t lay it at the feet of MCFD or at the feet of the workers or anything. It’s very much, as you will see, many of us.

[6:50 p.m.]

I say us because it’s going to take all of us to shift the trajectory. We have to figure out what was going on and learn as much as we can.

We have, as I’ve mentioned, strong guidance both overall and within the community working with Grand Chief Doug Kelly, who is assisting us with respect to protocols in the area and, of course, being very connected to family and to community in this work.

The other thing I wanted to say, and I think it’s important for all of us as we’re paying attention to this, is that there are risks from us doing this work. One is — inadver­tently, of course — reinforcing racist tropes. When we talk about the kind of violence and frame it as a First Nations child or an Indigenous community, then there is a risk of people going quickly to judgment.

We’re going to do our very best, and with good guidance, to make sure that we disrupt those kinds of tropes and speak about this as this being a legacy of colonial violence perpetrated over generations. It is time for us to walk the talk, in order to disrupt and dismantle many of these tropes. Furthermore, we’re seeing stories that are across the board. We hold many children’s stories, Indi­genous and non-Indigenous.

The other risk that we’re trying to prevent is causing harm to surviving children. We know that in the way in which we tell the story, this is going to be in perpetuity, or at least for a number of years. We don’t want these children, when they read this, harmed by what we disclose.

At the same time, we’re managing that tension of truth-telling and being mindful, too, of the impacted communities. They’ve been broken by this; it’s tragic. We don’t want to cause further harm there, and that’s, hence, the reason for working closely with community and recognizing that this is triggering.

Certainly, when I met with the First Nations Leadership Council shortly after this, they were very, very devastated. It was very triggering for them as well. So I’m mindful that that ripples out as well, as we talk about these tough things, but we can’t not talk about these tough things if we’re going to bring about some change. We’re mindful of the risks.

Let me tell you a little bit. This is tough, so please take care of your hearts when we’re talking about this. There is a tremendous amount that was shared in the media around what happened. I won’t go into the details, but I will tell you that this situation is extreme but not an outlier.

He was starved, he was tortured and ultimately he succumbed to horrific beatings that left him brain-dead and the difficult decision that his community and his family made to take him off life support. As I mentioned, many of the assaults over the last month of his life were captured on video. That is what led to the prosecution and ultimately the finding that the two caregivers were convicted of manslaughter and bodily harm.

As I said, there were many, many aspects of this. This was a failure of care and appropriate service being provided to this child. This was a matter of the child not being seen, not being heard, and these are not unfamiliar to us.

I wanted to turn your attention now to some of the learnings, because we can see what happened, but we have to figure out why. What is going on that led to this tragic, horrific outcome?

Key learnings — one of the first is that intergenerational, colonially caused violence and harm continues to play itself out in these situations — and oftentimes unresolved loss and grief. There are situations in which we have seen, through the work that John and his team have done, where a very horrific thing happened to a family member, and it was left unresolved. It was kind of swept under the rug, for example. Those things don’t go away. That trauma doesn’t go away. Those kinds of losses don’t go away.

We can track back four, possibly five, generations for this family where residential schools and the Sixties Scoop were playing out, and the violence was perpetrated both on maternal and paternal sides of families and in the perpetrators’ sides of their families as well. Really, paying attention to those intergenerational, colonial harms, and thinking about healing, what is it that’s necessary to do?

[6:55 p.m.]

One of the things that struck us very strongly in this was violence. It was over and over again. Frankly, if we picked just one thing to address, we would be addressing violence. As you’ll see, many of us are very mindful of that — the importance of yesterday and of recognizing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the harms that have been caused.

The other thing about this, though, was that there was questionable systemic response. This often is reinforced by racist or stigmatizing tropes of, “It’s just the way that it is in that community,” or: “That’s just what happens in that family.” We saw that play out, and we saw, also, the discomfort of people asking the question: “Are you okay? What’s going on? How can we be of help?”

They’re not interrogating, not inquiring or not being curious about why there was violence and what would need to be done to interrupt that violence, because it was almost just accepted. That was by police, by the ministry and by people involved, including in the community.

Although there has been a tremendous amount of work on intergenerational violence and on domestic and intimate-partner violence, what we found is that the child welfare system isn’t very good at addressing that or even inquiring about it. It wasn’t showing up in the practice.

We also saw that in situations for this little boy, the caregiver that ended up perpetrating the harm actually was asking for help. There were indications of violence in her history and of what was triggering the violence in her own stress. She was asking for help, and it wasn’t provided. So we created the conditions for that violence to carry on.

The next big learning for us was inconsistent or nonexistent family supports. We often wonder: what would have happened if this mom, when she’d had her children, had been wrapped in love and support to deal with the harms that she had experienced in her own life and had had support to raise her children? She actually was quite active in asking for help.

On Facebook, she contacted her MLA. There were many things she endeavoured to do. She struggled with mental health and substance use issues but wasn’t provided with the kinds of supports that were necessary to help her become the kind of mom that she desperately wanted to be. In fact, we’ve heard many stories of how much love and care she had, but she wasn’t able to provide everything that the family needed.

This was also a case in which we see those social determinants of health showing up — poverty, insecure housing, food insecurity, intimate-partner violence and all the related harms associated with that.

The next area that we learned from was lack of diligence for these extended family placements. So the prior contract checks, the kind of checking out whether this family was going to be a safe placement — none of that was done. Furthermore, when they were set up as a caregiver, they were not set up in the appropriate way, as a resource, so there was no oversight, and there were insufficient resources as well.

Again, the caregiver frequently asked for help, and you could see the buildup of the request for help over time unaddressed, and then she started to go silent. Obviously, the violence was escalating at that point. This little boy and his two siblings were placed, and this family already had three kids.

Then, guess what. COVID happened. She has six kids, she’s asking for help, COVID has disrupted everything that they were counting on as a family, and there wasn’t any kind of leaning in to see if there would be some way of providing the respite and help for those children.

That was a key one that keeps coming up for us — lack of interagency and intersectoral respect, engagement and collaboration. This is where we see the failure of our siloed systems. We have situations in which health care professionals were reaching out and raising concerns, educators were raising concerns, and community and family members were raising concerns. Often they were not being followed up on, not even getting the courtesy of a callback.

People had a piece of this child’s story, but no one was hosting that whole child’s story, which is really important. You’ve heard me say over and over again how important it is that we keep the whole child in our mind. There was no collaborative approach — period.

[7:00 p.m.]

Sometimes what we see in our work is that people say, “Oh well, we can’t share information, information-sharing protocols,” but we’re saying: “Hey, child at the centre. Start talking to one another.” You need to be talking to one another in order to understand what’s going on, especially when we’ve got complexity like this.

We also saw, as another theme, inconsistent practice and commitment to meeting policies. They, again, publicly reported that the compliance within this area was ex­tremely low. You can have the best policies in the world, but if people aren’t following them, it doesn’t mean diddly-squat. We saw an excessive and pervasive lack of compliance with MCFD policy and practice, including those mandatory reviews and police checks that I mentioned earlier.

Another theme that came up is workforce capacity and things like his main social worker went off for two months but there was no replacement, there was no follow-through, people couldn’t reach anybody to express their concerns. This was a time in which the health care professionals were saying “this child is going to die if they don’t get the care that they need,” but no one was stepping in to provide that support.

There also appears to be a lack of clarity about who to go to or where to go if there are questions. What we found was that there were tremendous amounts of misunderstandings, unchecked beliefs, assumptions about the family, and confusion about the direction. This happened to be in an area where they were moving towards jurisdiction. As we’ve heard from one Grand Chief, there’s squeamishness, the not knowing how to intervene in situations when you’re in that place of transition.

Those were all of the things that we began to learn from our little boy, and that has been brought into our sys­temic review because, of course, the First Nations Leadership Council, Our Children Our Way Society, etc., have said: “Please. This is breaking our hearts. We have to look at the systemic issues.” I have shared with you before those areas that we’re taking a look at and given you a little bit of an insight as to some of those things that we’re paying attention to going forward.

How we’re doing that, just so that you know, is that we have a very robust research team, including people that have gotten diverse experience we’ve brought in from the outside to help us. They’re doing literature reviews, jurisdictional scans, looking to the best practices out there across the world. We’ve got thousands of documentary evidence that has been section 10’d for our work, and we’ve been doing key informant interviews, what we call promising practice briefs, and trying to figure out what it is that we can bring forward that would be helpful.

That’s how we’re approaching the systemic review. I think you’ll see in this, and I believe I’ve shared with you before, we don’t want to just talk about symptoms or simple solutions. We have to get underneath. We have a 60-plus-page history paper that has looked at reports that have been coming since the 1970s. There’s no shortage of good ideas. The problem is implementation. We don’t sustain it. We start, and then we stop.

Deb has been in the child welfare field for a very long time as one of the founders of the very first delegated Aboriginal agency, Usma, and has been in the ministry as well as an ADM and has seen this over and over again. Sam’s been in the field for decades as well. Well, we all have. We’ve seen this. We see good intentions, but they don’t get realized.

We’re trying to get at those underlying mental models that speak about who’s worthy of our time and effort, who’s not. The mental models that are pervasive around stigma and discrimination and what parents have to prove to us in order for them to get our help are just some simple examples of that.

Moving on to engagement, we’ve actually got two phases for that. One speaks to what the challenges are. We’ve kind of got a consensus around that. Then the second one that we’re just moving into next week is: what does this mean and therefore what should we do about it? We’ve had open online sessions, we’ve had many sessions with First Nations Leadership, Our Children Our Way Society. We’ve done online sessions with provincial partners.

We’ve got four surveys out right now. A fascinating uptake on one, for example, with MCFD staff, which I think went out to about 1,200 staff. We’ve already got 800 responses, so lots and lots of uptake there. Then, as I say, thinking about meeting with families in places that they’re comfortable in one-to-one interviews. So trying to widen the circle so that we have a shared understanding of what’s going on.

[7:05 p.m.]

Now we’re going back, saying: “This is what we heard. This is what we think is most important. Are we on the right track? And most importantly, what are we going to do differently?” The “we” is an intentional choice of words, because it’s not any one’s responsibility or any one ministry’s responsibility.

We don’t want this to be just another story, just another report. Our commitment is to release the report this summer. Our hope is that that will be a blueprint. It will not be the end of our work. There will be a number of areas that we know we won’t be able to do in a fulsome way within this period of time, but we will continue to follow up.

We’re doing what we call supplementary bundles. Just imagine the bundle, the gift, the medicine bundle, if you will. It will include, from an open-source perspective, everything that we are learning, everything that we have gathered from people. So if you imagine that policy person that’s charged with trying to figure out what to do to implement recommendations on a particular area, they will have all of our background. Then we’ll do some further analysis in a few key areas, workforce capacity being one.

I want to end with the slide of what could they have been. We often think about that for the children that we hold the stories of, and as you know, there are hundreds that we hold their stories of every month, through the reportable circumstances, the reviews and some of the comprehensive reviews that we do.

It’s important for us to remember that children are far more than the worst thing that’s happened to them. The families are far more than the worst days in their lives. But we have to be able to hold onto the fact that when we look at these children, they are children that should have a future, that should be able to be the doctors, the mechanics, the contractors, the teachers. It requires us not just to help them survive a system, but to actually thrive in a system.

I can tell you, if you can feel the emotion in my voice, this is the worst case I’ve seen in 46 years. I’ve seen a lot, and we have to do something. I’ve been around those tables where we thought we were going to be making a big difference, and then it petered out. I don’t want to be a part of that anymore.

We’re looking to you for your questions, your guidance. We’ll also be looking to you to join us when we do the release in the summer, to stand with us so that we can do our very best job in a non-partisan way to support kids so that they can be whatever great things they want to be.

I’ll stop there.

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you, Jennifer.

I think the emotion in the room is palpable. We can feel it, and this is very, as you said, important work that you are doing right now, the review you are doing. I certainly look forward to reading the full report when it comes out.

This is the members’ opportunity to ask questions, but I’m also sensitive to the fact that we want to wait till the report is done and let the representative do her job. If anybody has any process questions, that’s about where I think we should go today. That’s just my feeling.

M. Bernier (Deputy Chair): Maybe not so much a process question, but I know, obviously, we feel your passion. I think this is the gut-wrenching part for all of us, more for you than the committee. When I say “you,” I mean all of you, definitely.

I think the only comment I could really make while you’re doing this difficult work is that it’s work we would hope you’d never have to do to begin with. I really take to heart your point of this is a perfect example of, I think, from a committee standpoint, where we all…. I speak on behalf of the whole committee, I think, when I say this is the non-partisanship portion, where we will work collectively in any way we can to ensure that when stuff like reports like this come forward, that we’re there embracing it and, I think, talking about it.

If we don’t talk about it, it’s like it didn’t happen. So it’s not just a report; it’s about the unfortunate circumstances, the story and how we can collectively try to embrace it in a solemn way by trying to help educate people. All I can think of, really, is collectively for all of you.

[7:10 p.m.]

Thank you, because I can only imagine the difficulty it has been and what it will continue to be as you’re putting this report together to try to make a difference.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you. I’ll just say, too, that yeah, we don’t want to have stories like this at all, but it’s also not an outlier.

We have another five stories that we will weave in. We can’t do some of those stories in a fulsome way because there are still criminal proceedings, but we do need to tell their stories, too. There are many of these things. The lessons from this little boy are lessons for many children, and I keep imagining him telling us…. We often do this. We often bring the children in the room and we imagine what they’re telling us we need to pay attention to.

As you know, I’ve spoken before about my great gratitude for many young people, who will say, “It’s not going to be better for me, but I want it to be better for my foster brothers and sisters or my siblings” or whomever. I keep thinking of that, because there are many things here that speak to a systemic and structural failure, not just a bad apple of a social worker or not just a lack of clarity about policy. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you, Jennifer, and I want to thank all of your team for doing this work, with the anguish, emotion and rollercoaster journey that all of you are on right now.

A. Singh: I was just going to add here: my child is an MCFD child. Just the thought that you exist and…. Not for her, but for her…. It hits hard. Thank you.

J. Sims (Chair): It does hit hard.

What I’m going to suggest now is that it’s very hard to move on to the next part of the agenda without taking a break. Let’s take a minute’s break, and then we will reconvene and start on the next part of the agenda. Usually after this, the last thing you want to do is look at technical stuff, but it’s on the agenda, and we have to do our job.

With all the emotion in the room, let’s take a minute to just decompress. I’m calling a recess for two minutes.

The committee recessed from 7:12 p.m. to 7:14 p.m.

[J. Sims in the chair.]

J. Sims (Chair): Now I’m going to call the meeting back to order, and I’m going to turn the floor back to our representative for an update on recommendations monitoring.

RECOMMENDATIONS MONITORING

J. Charlesworth: Thank you, Chair. I’ll shortly be turning it over to Jennifer Dreyer.

At the risk of having just done our deep breaths, I did want to say there were some questions that we had posed to the committee as well. We invite you to provide feedback to us, because we do want to make sure that you’re part of the circle as well. Does this resonate with you?

Also, it’s so important that we have hope, and we do have some beautiful practices that we’re able to feature in our work. There may be things that you’re aware of in your constituency. Please don’t hesitate to tell us about the things that you’re excited about or proud of, so that we can reflect those bright spots, because we need a good sense of hope.

[7:15 p.m.]

I should have said, too, that as part of our approach, we’re keeping the ministry apprised as we go forward. Every two weeks now we’re keeping them apprised and being as candid with them as possible. Where there have been some quick wins or some things that we need them to pay attention to, we have told them, and they’re trying hard to ensure that they’re taking action, going forward. As I say, just to leave those questions with you that are in the materials that we presented previously.

With that, take another deep breath. I will turn it over to Jennifer Dreyer, and she will guide you through the annual summary of recommendations monitoring report that we released at the end of March.

J. Dreyer: Thank you for the opening and for the opportunity to come and speak about recommendations again today to you all. We’ve just started by speaking about the tragic death of this young boy and the all-too-familiar systemic issues that we’ve read time and again in different reports dating back to the ’70s, as Jennifer said.

Now I’ll be presenting our second annual summary of recommendations monitoring report. I recognize this could be the data part or the technical part. Instead, this evening, we chose to come forward to bring what we’ve learned about where we are seeing change, so that when this report comes forward this summer, you all, as a committee, hopefully have what you need to foster that shared commitment and stand with us to move the recommendations forward for this young boy and the many other children whose stories we see every day.

This work is incredibly important for our office. None of us want to see another child’s story turned into a report that sits on a shelf. Taken together, across the 11 reports that our monitoring team looked at this year, there are hundreds of children’s lives, including the investigations of Charlie, Romain and Skye.

It’s important that we remember that these recommendations are more than compliance. They are the lived and living experiences of children and youth in B.C. Recent data on child poverty, vulnerability and well-being show very clearly that many children in our province are not okay, and things are getting worse.

In February of this year, the representative released a statement to call on government to come together and step up to prioritize children and youth in this province.

This evening we’re going to share examples of where we have seen government step up this year to support your efforts to raise awareness about the child- and youth-serving system. We’re also going to talk about where we’re still waiting, because some of those barriers that we’ve seen this year are directly relevant to the work of the story harvest and the investigation. It’s important we get ahead of that before the report comes out this summer.

I’ll bring your attention to the first slide, slide 19 in your bundle. It just offers a wee bit of an overview of our monitoring approach. I know we’ve been here a few times and spoken to it, so I’m not going to go into it in depth, other than to say that this year’s annual monitoring summary reflects that same monitoring approach. We’ve requested our annual updates from ministries. We’ve assessed their progress and then reported on those same four quadrants: no-progress, some progress, substantial and complete.

The important part to remember is that when we measure progress, we’re looking at the implementation. As Jennifer said earlier, this is not an issue of ideas; this is an issue of implementation. That’s what our reports are looking at. At a high level, the report showed that, as with last year, progress is slow.

Last year we reported 14 percent of recommendations as complete. This year, we’re up to 15, but it’s important to note that that includes two new reports with new recommendations. Some of the key highlights from this year are that recommendations for children and youth with mental health needs still remain quite delayed.

We have seen some progress for children and youth with disabilities, with some of the recommendations from Excluded being fulfilled in the piloting of the family connections centres, but we do still see considerable delays.

You’ll see in the ministry-by-ministry comparison that our colleagues at the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions continue to struggle with recommendations delays as the focus remains on the strategic policy priority of A Pathway to Hope. MCFD has fallen behind, with delays for action planning for At a Crossroads and A Parent’s Responsibility this year.

[7:20 p.m.]

Rather than go into the details of compliance and the individual recommendations that are stuck or not stuck, I’m going to focus on three takeaways for us this evening — again, with that idea that the issue is not good intention. We’re not here to assign blame; rather, this is an implementation issue. What can we learn about implementation, moving from what to why, so that we can get some good momentum behind the recommendations that are coming this summer?

There are three key takeaways for us this evening. The first is that our office has found that by increasing awareness about recommendations compliance, it has directly increased the engagement of government. So when you all asked us to go and do the deep dive, it had a strong effect. We are hearing from our colleagues in ministries that their leadership is more engaged. Ministers are being updated more regularly, and we’re seeing that progress.

Second, political commitment, concerted effort and tangible action are resulting in change. I’ll share with you an example that we highlighted in the report, from the Missing report this year, where we’ve seen incredible, fast-paced change.

Then the third takeaway is that the barriers we identified last year in Advocating for Change are still present, and they’re falling further behind. These are incredibly relevant for the story harvest and systemic review, as many of the issues that Jennifer spoke to this evening are going to require fulsome, non-partisan government engagement, political commitment and meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities.

On slide 20, you can see a direct comparison from last year’s recommendations that we brought forward and this year’s.

I loved your quote from earlier, MLA Bernier. If we don’t talk about it, it’s like it didn’t happen. That’s the intention here.

What I want to highlight is that by us talking about it and raising awareness of the lack of progress, we’ve raised awareness within ministries. Like I said, we’ve heard from government staff that leadership is more engaged and that they’re finding ways to make things happen. This has never been a shortage of good intention; it’s overflowing desks. Getting our reports off the shelf and into the centre of the work is, obviously, a big priority for us. By talking about it, we’re making that happen.

A great example of this is since this committee’s decision in November to bring forward government bodies to speak on the progress in Detained — that was the presentation you saw a few weeks ago — we’ve now received the draft of the Guide to the Mental Health Act from the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. When this draft is finalized and implemented, it will make a significant difference for children: to help them understand what’s happening to them and what their rights are when they’re detained under the Mental Health Act.

We want to acknowledge the progress. However, it’s important that we remain curious and ask the question: why is this work two years overdue, and why are we just receiving it now? I believe that it’s because you all called and asked for that progress. We’ve seen a huge momentum and support for their team that’s trying to put this work forward.

If we move now to the next slide, this slide shows a side-by-side of the three most recent reports from 2022 to 2023. Here’s where we’re going to talk about the progress that we’ve seen in the Missing report. This is that second key takeaway. Political commitment, concerted effort and tangible action result in change. This year the minister’s commitment to fulfil the recommendations of our Missing report fast-tracked change and demonstrated that political will can very much determine the success of recommendations made by our office.

I have no doubt that in addition to the public commitment, the engagement of this committee, as well as the pressure at the time in the Legislative Assembly and the pressure in the media to raise awareness about lost and missing children really helped put the wind in the sails behind these recommen­dations. We saw, in very short order, substantial progress in the other three recommendations well underway. This level of engagement is truly unprecedented for our office, and it demonstrates the timely and responsive change when things are made a public priority.

Finally, I want to bring your attention to where we’re still seeing barriers, barriers that are directly relevant to this little boy and the success of his recommendations that will come.

Slide 22 highlights that the barriers we had identified in Advocating for Change last year are still present. Monitoring assessments show that we are still seeing delay where recommendations require multiple ministries to work together and where recommendations have Indigenous-specific focus. This is deeply concerning, as these same barriers have been observed in this little boy’s life.

[7:25 p.m.]

Issues at an individual level are being reflected at a systemic level. For our recommendations to be successfully implemented, we must address the lack of clarity and accountability at interministerial policy tables, and we must address the lack of timely coordination with Indigenous partners and governing bodies.

Our office sees daily the result of systemic fragmentation, fiscal inequities and the failure of care that Jennifer spoke to earlier. We see it through rights violations, through poor outcomes, and through concerns that come from the community. We need to, as the statement said in February, step up and work together for children and families.

In closing, while I want to say that this year government has made progress, we need to see more. The early findings of our investigation and systemic review are clear. Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in B.C. need all of government to show up and step up for them in coordinated effort to address the vulnerabilities and build a B.C. where children and their families can thrive.

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you, Jennifer, for giving us that update. It reminded me of my teaching days again. Instead of going A, B, C, D, E, you gave lots of positive feedback. You also highlighted where there is room for growth or for improvement. Thank you for that.

Now I’m turning to members for questions.

M. Bernier (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Jennifer, for walking us through that again. I’m happy to hear that there’s some progress on some. I think that’s important, and I think it doesn’t matter how many times we have sat in this room or will continue, I think it’ll always be not enough.

One of the things that you flagged for me that I’m cur­ious…. We’re a non-political group, and I’ll say this has gone through multiple different political regimes, so this is not something that’s just taking place now. How do we stop the report from getting on the shelf to begin with? That’s one of my frustrations I’ve seen over many years here.

I’m glad to hear when there’s political will, if we’re going to use that analogy, that some reports maybe get more attention than others. But it shouldn’t be up to the politicians, in my opinion, to be picking and choosing which reports get attention or which recommendations. That’s why you’re here and doing the good work to bring that forward.

Again, that’s not a dig at what’s happening presently. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. So in the time you’ve spent doing this as well, what would you say to us that can help you and the system just to come up with a dynamic or a situation where these reports actually have more value when they hit the ministry. Regardless of who’s the minister or the ministry or who’s in government — that doesn’t matter. How do we stop it from getting on the shelf? How do we have a system that says this is a priority? It has to be addressed. Somebody has to be dealing with it.

And yes, some might take longer than others because we’ve seen recommendations — that some are simplistic; some take time. I always find it frustrating when I hear that people are too busy and it’s on the shelf. That’s not why we do this work. Maybe I’m looking for advice from you as well — or ideas.

J. Dreyer: Thank you for that question. We’re working on that.

I actually had a really wonderful call today with the deputy director from MCFD talking about just that, because we’re really trying to understand what was the magic behind Missing. What was the political tone? What was happening in the media?

As much as we would love to think that it’s a beautifully written report, sometimes it’s just the right timing. In the conversation this afternoon, we talked about how our office could work more collaboratively and iteratively together for change.

As you may remember with the Missing report, when we brought our research forward to the representative, over the course of a two-month review, four children had died that were lost or missing. So we had this this choice to either continue doing in-depth research as we like, B.C.-specific research, or to release a systems issues brief and raise awareness immediately about the issue, and that’s what we did.

Those six recommendations where we saw really great action were short-term urgent response. We actually sat on the working group with the Indigenous Child and Family Services Directors and with MCFD, and in real time we’re working together to solve the solution. We had a great conversation today about the potential of maybe doing more of that in the future.

[7:30 p.m.]

I think the other thing with Missing that’s important to note is that we had engaged with the ministry beginning all the way back in fall. We released in May, and we started engagements with the ministry when we discovered that we had a different number of missing children than they did.

We started that conversation in December. There had been a lot of pre-work, and with the sacred story harvest and systemic review, the team is doing that. We’re sharing information in real time so we don’t have to wait for some large report release to improve the lives of children and address the policy issues.

J. Charlesworth: Maybe I can add to that. Thank you. That’s such a good example.

I think therein lies one of the challenges. We could make ourselves feel good, frankly, if we issued reports that had quick and dirty recommendations. It’s like: “Do this training. Put more money over here. Start this program.” That would be easy. But what we’re dealing with is incredible complexity.

We also understand that some of the things we’re asking government to do are tricky. It’s not like we expect that they’re just going to flip the switch, and all will be good. But we are wanting to make sure that we are not complicit in maintaining the status quo also. That’s why we start to talk about some of the things that are going to be more difficult but are essential to do.

Jen’s picking up on something that…. We’ve taken a look at our own behaviour in all of this too. Because what we have done, historically, is put the report out there. We’ve not even done knowledge mobilization; we release it, and then we move on to the next thing. So as you know, we’ve focused much more on knowledge mobilization and also the convening work, having these conversations.

A good example is around substance use. As you know, the toxic drug supply…. You’ve heard me many times talking about how profound the impact is, direct and indirect, on kids. We’ve been waiting since 2018 for Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions to have a child and youth plan. We still don’t have a child and youth plan for substance use.

We thought: “Okay, well, we could keep harping on this, or we could start to say: ‘What are we going to do about it?’” We’re actually convening on June 18, working with the Wosk Centre for Dialogue, bringing in the people that have something to say and can help us understand the phenomenon, so that we can start to co-create. When we see…. It’s a different kind of approach for us. We can still be independent, but we don’t have to be isolated. We don’t have to be over here on our little pedestal and then expecting government to address these complex issues.

I think it’s important that…. Yeah, it shouldn’t be on the shelf at all, because children are 20 percent of our population but 100 percent of our future. So we have to show up differently. But that also means we have to keep trying doing different things to get people to connect with these issues. Hence that different approach with the ministry and doing the convening with the Wosk Centre for Dialogue and bringing in the different parts of the system and breaking down those silos — knowledge mobilization.

If you’ve got some suggestions…. What would it take for you as committee members, as champions in the Legislative Assembly, to be able to take this work and then be the champions that you want to be as well? We welcome those ideas, because if you take a look at the numbers of reports…. It’s history, people, will blow your mind of how many reports since the 1970s have come out. Lots of great ideas. We suck at implementation. And that’s a very academic term.

J. Sims (Chair): I think you’ve given us some homework as well — that question you threw out about the role of the committee members on being champions and for us to spend some time brainstorming. How do we make sure that reports move forward and recommendations move forward?

As you said, it’s not one side. It’s collaborative. I like the fact that you’re not over here, in a silo, just shooting out reports, but that you’ve started to work collaboratively with the ministries in order to move forward on many of these things.

I think I saw a hand up out here.

Sorry, go ahead, MLA Routley.

D. Routley: Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much for these reports and your lifelong commitment to this work. I’m retiring, so I won’t be seeing much more of it.

[7:35 p.m.]

I’m frustrated by the way these stories are portrayed. You come with the insight and recommendations that make so much sense, and they’re so complex, and government should be responding in a multidimensional way. But the public experience stories that are in a format and language that haven’t evolved with this understanding.

I’m wondering if there’s any work to help journalists understand more the state that the work is in and bring them along, because so much of it is coming to people through them, so we can heal our differences and work together. If it’s portrayed always in the same way…. Do you work directly with…?

J. Charlesworth: That’s such a good question. It’s a question we talk about a lot because, as you know, the media is impacted by not having in-depth journalism in many situations. So to find a reporter that’s willing to go with us into the more nuanced aspects…. Everybody wants to have somebody to blame.

It’s so heartbreaking for us. We’re very anxious about the fact that this child’s complex story, with all the different nuances that we’re understanding in this, will come down to: “They were bad-apple workers, but now they’ve been fired, so it’s all fine.” Even worse, it’s like: “Oh, well, you can’t expect any better from a family that’s on reserve.” That would be heartbreaking. But unfortunately, that is what we deal with.

There are a few things that we’re thinking of as to…. It changes the way in which we write our reports, for sure. We’ve had lots of good conversations today about that. It also is changing the way we think about the multiple products, not just the big report, but the handouts.

It’s like: “Media, use these talking points.” The way in which we do the ceremony and the release and bring people in to recognize that this is not just a simple thing of some bad apples or some horrible humans. There are those kinds of things.

We’ve also got some reporters that we really trust. We nurture the relationship with them and start to say: “We’re happy to have a conversation with you beforehand.” That’s probably an unusual approach, but we do feel strongly that there’s a lot at stake if we don’t get this right in terms of harm to the surviving families and community.

We have had situations in which things are out of our control. Stories get released or leaked, not by us, but by others. Then, before you know it, there are people at the gate of the daycare, for goodness sakes, trying to get somebody to talk to them. It’s like: “No, that’s not okay.” But it’s a very tricky thing, trying to work with the media.

If you’ve got some suggestions, that would be great. But we are looking at the way we frame the story, the kinds of products, the way we release, and then sticking with it so that the simple narrative doesn’t overtake everybody’s awareness.

D. Routley: I like the suggestion of us all standing together when this happens in July. You said so. That might show a difference.

J. Charlesworth: I think it’s so important. It’s interesting. The U.K. did a very thorough review, a systemic review. There were a couple of things that I really liked about it, in that they did a really good job of talking about how tough this work is.

We quickly go to: “Well, it must have been the worker’s fault.” We keep saying that this work is super hard. Humans are messy. Relationships are messy. We can’t possibly know what’s going on behind closed doors.

The thing that they did well there, which is a good lesson for us, is to talk about the fact that it’s really important to understand just how difficult it is, and that it isn’t one ministry’s fault. It’s not even the government’s responsibility. It’s all of our responsibility.

What would have happened if community members had done a little bit more — for example, neighbours? I’ve said in this committee before that the well-being of children is a collective responsibility.

[7:40 p.m.]

I do hope that we can stand together in a non-partisan way and say that we are committed to children and doing what’s necessary in order to support their well-being.

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you.

I want to thank all of you for coming here today and presenting to us. A lot of pain and anguish in the first presentation, and I think lots to think about in the second. With that in mind, we’re now to that point where…. We, as committee members, have adopted a practice whereby we will now see if there is any ministry or government body that we want to come and give us an update.

I’ll give you my point of view, having taken a look at this at this stage. I think the way you’ve started to work with the government and the way that you’ve started to get results is going in the right direction. I, for myself, could not think of any one person I would like to have come before us right now, but to the rest of my colleagues: I’d like to hear from you.

M. Bernier (Deputy Chair): I would think she should do a shot across the bow, because I hear that that helps a little bit.

J. Sims (Chair): We can do that without having them here.

M. Bernier (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Actually, where I was going to go is At a Crossroads. It’s great to see one that’s recent that has so much green and yellow. But one that’s a couple of years old now has zero, even though it’s only three recommendations, all red.

I want to preface this by understanding that we’re at the end of a session and going into an election year, and we’re going to be limited on some of the opportunities or the way that the ministries might be able to respond. I’m throwing this out there for the Chair.

Even if it were a recommendation that we get something in writing to the committee that says: “Can you just give, high level…? Why have we not looked at any of these three recommendations…?” I’m sure they’ve got good reasons. I’d love to hear them.

To your commentary about when there’s political will, sometimes there’s momentum…. Easy things are easy to do; hard things are hard to do. These might be three hard things. Just tell me why they haven’t even been, maybe, taken off the shelf yet.

That would be my suggestion. Even if we can get something back in writing from the ministry of their explan­ation for why this one hasn’t been looked at yet….

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you, Mike. I heard a motion in there, and the motion is that…. Apparently, I have to wait.

M. Bernier (Deputy Chair): Do you want an official motion?

J. Sims (Chair): Yes, not one made up by me on the fly.

J. Dreyer: While she looks for that, maybe I’ll just say I think that’s an excellent recommendation. I think At a Crossroads….

Particularly with MCFD right now, you’ve seen some wonderful leaders within the organization trying to champion that work. There’s a unique shift in the tide that’s happening within the organization right now. You have former ADM Keith Godin, who did an incredible amount of work at the Ministry of Education around data inequity, Indigenous learners and reimagining resourcing, and learning from that and bringing that to the issue of fiscal inequity for children and youth in care, for Indigenous children and youth who are off reserve.

I think we have a great opportunity, even if it is just in writing, to get some momentum behind somebody who is now the acting deputy minister. He’s very interested in this topic, has been out and met with the Institute of Fis­cal Studies and Democracy. I think he’s well positioned to give us a path forward, regardless of what happens with the election.

J. Sims (Chair): Thank you.

I’m now going to turn over to MLA Bernier, because he has a motion to move.

M. Bernier (Deputy Chair): I move that the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth request the appropriate government bodies provide an update in writing on the status of implementing recommendations in the report of the Representative for Children and Youth titled At a Crossroads at the earliest opportunity and that the Chair and the Deputy Chair work with the committee staff to finalize the text of this request.

J. Sims (Chair): Okay, seconded by MLA Singh.

Motion approved.

J. Sims (Chair): It carries unanimously. Thank you very much.

Now I turn to committee members. Is there any other business?

Seeing none, it is moved by MLA Greene and seconded by MLA Kirkpatrick that we now adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 7:45 p.m.