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Sunday, December 18, 2005
Committee? Check.
Justice?
Maybe not
By Stephen Kimber - The Daily News
Graham Steele was
frustrated. One of his constituents, a woman named Marilyn
Dey, had come to him almost two years before, to ask for his
help with a
child custody case. But she'd buried the NDP MLA under the weight of so many
documents and so much information
- not just about her own case, but the
cases of others she knew who were experiencing similar problems with the
province's
child welfare services - Steele was overwhelmed.
To complicate matters, she'd not only drawn connections among all
those
cases, but also tied them together with the intricate strands of any number
of conspiracy theories to explain
the why of the what.
Steele had tried to tell her he wasn't an investigator or a policeman, that
neither he nor
his colleagues had the resources or the authority to do the
kind of investigations she wanted.
Which was why he
was relieved earlier this year when Dey mentioned in
passing that she'd discovered that an independent committee the government
was
supposed to appoint each year - to review how the child welfare act was
working - had not been operational for at least
three years.
"Now that," he said, "I can help you with."
Supreme Court
Trading in his MLA's podium for
his lawyer's briefs, Steele filed an
application with the courts to force the minister of community services,
David
Morse, to appoint the review committee.
Last week, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Hilroy Nathanson wasted little
time
in dismissing the government's dissembling justifications for inaction
and ordered the minister to do it by the end of
this month.
The fact is that the government - perhaps recognizing the ridiculousness of
its own arguments - had
already finally, belatedly, reluctantly begun naming
people to serve on the 10-person committee.
"When we filed
the court papers June 27," Steel says, "they had appointed
zero members." By the time court convened at 11 a.m. on Dec.
13, nine of the
10 members of the review committee were in place, the last two named just
two hours before the hearing.
While
Steele says he personally knows some of those appointed to the
committee "and they'll be fine," he noted that the appointment
process
itself "left a great deal to be desired."
By law, the committee's membership is supposed to include one
representative
each of the minister and a child welfare agency, a legal aid lawyer, two
members from the province's
"cultural, racial or linguistic minority
communities" and - most importantly - "two persons whose children have been,
are
or may be in need of protective services."
The government pointedly dismissed applications from Dey and another woman,
Linda
Youngson, the second complainant in Steele's application, who wanted
to serve as parent representatives.
And it
ignored other individuals who'd volunteered to serve after reading
about Steele's court application.
At the same
time, the government courted others to come forward, even doing
the paperwork for a least one nominee.
Society employees
The
two names they initially put forward as minority representatives, in
fact, turned out to be employees of the Children's
Aid Society, the agency
whose actions are most likely to be criticized. Talk about stacking the
deck!
But the
key appointees remain those two parent representatives. "The aim of
the people who set this up," says Steele, was that
those on the "receiving
end of the system" be strongly represented on the committee.
So who has Morse named?
The
man chosen to fill one of those two positions is Timothy Van Zoost, who
ran provincially for the Conservatives a few elections
ago. His
qualification is that one of his children was in care before he adopted her.
While that technically fits the
criteria, it sure as hell doesn't give Van
Zoost experience with having his child taken away from him, or with trying
to
get her back.
There is still one vacancy for a parent representative on the committee, one
last chance for David
Morse to get it right. Based on his track record,
don't hold your breath.
Even after it is finally in place, however,
it's worth asking what the
committee can actually do. Can it look into the dozens of complaints from
people like Dey
about how
Can it go back to the spring of 2004 and finally conduct a real review of
the controversial CAS seizure
of Larry Finck's and Carline VandenElsen's
infant daughter?
Steele says it can.
"It's supposed to be an independent
committee," he explains. "The question
is whether it will be willing to ask the tough questions". He pauses "The
fact
is there is no other forum for these discussions. The committee is the
only hope for those people who want answers to their
questions."
All of us should be watching to see what happens.
Stephen Kimber is a member of the MCF Inquiry
Committee, a community group
pushing for a public inquiry into the seizure of Larry Finck and Carline
VandenElsen's
baby.
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