Written by LES LEYNE, Victoria Times Colonist
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Thursday, 04 December 2008 |
VICTORIA -- There's a nicely appointed committee room in the legislature called the Douglas Fir Room. It's got a big board table, lots of comfy seats. It's fully wired for webcasts, with coffee and muffins on the sideboard. Needless to say, it's warm and dry.
That's where the politicians and the officials meet to go over progress reports on how B.C. is doing when it comes to looking after aboriginal kids.
Then there's the Tsulquate reserve near Port Hardy. It's a scattering of shoddy houses that are rank with mould so pungent you can smell it on people who live there.
The stinging smell brought tears to the eyes of reporters who toured some of the houses this week.
And the overall situation brought tears of despair to the eyes of the band manager who invited them to learn more about why several dozen children have been apprehended by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
The two locales presented quite a contrast this week. One day after the media trooped through the disgusting reserve houses, the officials trooped into the committee room for a regular update on the big picture as far as protection of aboriginal children is concerned.
It's tempting to just note there are no signs of mould in the committee room and leave it there.
But as usual, it's more complicated than that.
The meeting kicked off with a representative of the auditor general's office going over its report from last spring.
The independent watchdog checked out the Ministry of Children and Family's work and concluded "that many protection needs of aboriginal children were unmet."
Couched in the official language used in the room, the watchdogs expressed their unhappiness. "Only partly meeting goals," "change management not in step with goals," "no persuasive business case to negotiate for federal and provincial funding."
There was about a half-hour of dry jargon along those lines before the ministry stepped up to reply.
"Child welfare on reserves is an area of concurrent jurisdiction," was one of the opening lines. That translates as: "blame the feds, too."
Ministry officials continued with a brisk rundown of the problem. Stripped to the bare minimum, it's this: Of the 9,026 B.C. children in care in October, 4,729 of them were aboriginal.
Of course that's grossly out of proportion to natives' five-per-cent share of the population. A number of secondary problems flow from the high number of aboriginal children in care.
There are arguments about whether the share is increasing or decreasing, about whether the province is keeping up with the burgeoning native population, about devolving responsibility and a host of other issues.
Ministry officials went through all those problems and defended themselves. They have a number of valid success stories and indicators that show they're doing the best they can.
This whole process took several hours and was conducted very politely and professionally.
All anyone wants to hear from these sessions is some faint hint of progress. Any kind of progress at all would be welcome. The MLAs probed some of the details for a while, then just accepted the report and moved on.
There's no telling if they were satisfied or not, but it's very unlikely.
No one could possibly be satisfied after getting a glimpse of the Tsulquate housing. Colleague Lindsay Kines reported the thick black mould on the windows and baseboards, the 16 people living in one house and band officials' suspicions the mould has something to do with three recent pre-natal deaths.
How it relates back to the committee meeting is also complicated. The struggling band management blames the poor housing for the apprehension of 60 children currently in the care of the government.
The ministry disputes that number, saying it's 47. And the apprehensions are due to child protection concerns, not poor housing, it adds.
Are 47 apprehensions from a tiny village of about 500 an indication of failure all by itself?
Or, if things are so bad up there, are the apprehensions a perverse sign that the ministry is doing its job?
And why isn't there at least some agreement on the numbers?
And why does this disgrace persist after various concentrated and persistent assaults on the problem by governments?
Those are all topics for another meeting in the committee room, where they'll sit down again looking for signs of progress.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 04 December 2008 )
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