Editorials

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Past time to give up this ghost

By: Editorial

Posted: 02/18/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

The Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union has been told its desperate attempt to shut down a public inquiry into the 2005 death of little Phoenix Sinclair has no place in a court of law. In the clearest possible terms, Justice Martin Freedman painted the MGEU's request as baseless.

The union challenge essentially had no hope of succeeding, the Appeal Court judge said. The MGEU should take that as a sign its attempt to halt public scrutiny of the role family services workers played in the tragic case is unworthy of pursuit. Unfortunately, the union has two weeks to consider appealing the judge's decision and that will prolong the preparation of the evidence to be heard at the public inquiry. Interviews with the social workers involved were to begin weeks ago but were put off pending the court challenge. The MGEU should give up this ghost.

The Hughes inquiry into the death of Phoenix Sinclair, who while repeatedly in and out of the care of child welfare agencies was killed, then buried for nine months before anyone in authority knew she was missing, was to report in early 2012. Phoenix died after being repeatedly beaten, abused and neglected by her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Child and Family Services workers were called to the house shortly before the five-year-old was killed in 2005 and buried in the Fisher River First Nation garbage dump. The death might still be a secret had her step-brothers not disclosed it. A 2008 trial put Samantha Kematch and Karl McKay in jail for first-degree murder, but it did not answer the burning question of how such an atrocity could occur despite all the contact the family had with CFS.

Judge Freedman laid out clearly the differences between an official inquiry and any other form of investigation that was or could have been called into Phoenix's death: An internal review by the Children's Advocate is secret by law and an inquest is a court process that allows a judge to decide how broadly he or she might investigate circumstances surrounding a death. By contrast, an inquiry is broad and purposely public.

This inquiry is the first chance to connect the scattered known facts of Phoenix's death with a broader context to explain how she fell through the cracks.

In prolonging the inquiry, the union and the social workers who fear the spotlight are doing the public a disservice. The greater insult, however, is to a little girl who suffered for others' failings, was hidden beyond help in life and then permanently silenced.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 18, 2012 A16

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