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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Worthy cause for children's advocate
( DALE CUMMINGS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS )
Children's Advocate Darlene MacDonald recently bemoaned the expense of the inquiry into the death of little Phoenix Sinclair, wondering whether there is any more to be learned and whether the money would be better used to improve child welfare services. Ms. MacDonald should throw her support firmly on the side of public accountability.
Phoenix died in 2005, in the basement of her mother's house after repeated beatings, torturous abuse and neglect. The girl was in and out of child welfare care. Her file was closed three times, the last just two months before she died.
About $4.7 million this year alone has been spent on an inquiry that has yet to really begin its public hearings. Delays launched by the social workers union have held it up.
Among the reviews of the system because of Phoenix's tragic murder -- for which her mother and her mother's boyfriend are serving life sentences -- only one looked expressly at the roles child-welfare staff and agencies played in this case. That review, called a Sec. 4 review under the Child and Family Services Act, was not made public, although its recommendations were released.
The biggest question still in the public mind is: How could a child who had so much contact with CFS be murdered nine months before anyone in a position of authority knew she was missing? Why was she returned to her mother?
Ms. MacDonald says things have changed since 2005. But the public is expected to accept the recommendations were appropriate to the findings, and that all the right questions were asked.
In one breath, Ms. MacDonald, in a "clarification" of her remarks, says her office "fully supports the public's right to know the facts leading to the cause of Phoenix Sinclair's death." And in the next, she questions whether the inquiry can bring to light "deficits of which we are not already aware" after reviews that produced 200 recommendations.
Manitobans will hear whether the recommendations have had an effect and whether more need be done. But if the Office of the Children's Advocate is truly supportive of the "public's right to know" it should ask the government to make Sec. 4 reports public. The unique release of the report into the death of toddler Gage Guimond shows that is possible. It is time to change the legislation to ensure public accountability. Then, perhaps, the need for long, expensive inquiries would be rare.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 13, 2012 A10
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