Tories want internal CFS report on Tina Fontaine released

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This article was published 30/03/2015 (3845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Opposition Progressive Conservatives called on the provincial government today to release an internal report on Child and Family Service’s involvement with Tina Fontaine before her death.

Family Services Critic Ian Wishart said CFS was the last public agency to have contact with the 15-year-old Fontaine before her body was recovered from the Red River last Aug. 17.

Wishart said Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross should release the report saying it could shed light on avoiding similar circumstances involving other young people who are wards of CFS, but living on the street.

“We certainly want to make sure that no one is left at risk,” Wishart said.

Fontaine’s death remains an open police investigation.

Last week, city police said they would not discuss the specifics of contact two officers had with Fontaine on Aug. 8 when she was a missing person.

One officer, acting as a field trainer, and the other, a recruit, had stopped a vehicle during the early hours of Aug. 8. Police have told Fontaine’s family that all four people in the vehicle were intoxicated, the driver was taken into custody, but the others, including Tina, were let go.

Later that day, Tina was found passed out in an Ellice Avenue back lane near the University of Winnipeg, taken to hospital by paramedics and later transferred to a downtown hotel by a Child and Family Services worker.

She was last seen the next day, Aug. 9, walking away with a man who agreed to pay her for sex, and was subsequently reported missing in a police news release.

Wishart said because of the involvement of CFS, the province and Irvin-Ross bear responsibility.

“Her department’s actions are something that should be in the public realm,” Wishart said, adding the report’s release would not conflict with the police investigation in Fontaine’s death.

Police said last Tuesday that the two officers who had contact with Fontaine will not be charged. Manitoba Justice made the decision not to lay criminal charges three months ago, yet police waited until last Monday to make that information public.

Police said the Crown told them in December it would not charge the two officers who encountered Fontaine but did not detain her. She disappeared shortly after that, and her body, wrapped in plastic, was recovered from the river a week later.

Police said one of the two officers is now suspended without pay, while the second officer remains on administrative leave. The WPS has begun disciplinary proceedings against the members involved under the service’s regulations.