‘Horrific stories’ demand action: MLA

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This article was published 06/03/2024 (551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The demand for an urgent debate about the safety of children in care — after last month’s slaying of three young children and a teen in Carman, as well as revelations a for-profit foster care operator gave youth cannabis — was rejected Wednesday by the Speaker of the Manitoba legislature.

“We should be debating it immediately,” Liberal Cindy Lamoureux said outside the chamber. “In the last few weeks we’re hearing horrific stories about children in care and transitioning out of care being murdered, being given marijuana and being released from custody and murdered the next day.”

Lamoureux raised the motion about recent failings in the child welfare system and Tory Lauren Stone supported it. Speaker Tom Lindsey said the motion didn’t meet the criteria that there must be no other reasonable opportunity to raise the matter.

Myah-Lee Gratton, 17, was slain on Feb. 11 in Carman. The 17-year-old had messaged her Child and Family Services worker asking to be moved from her placement because it was not safe. She was living with her cousin Amanda Clearwater, 30, and her three young children aged six, four and two months. Clearwater’s partner, the father of the children, Ryan Manoakeesick, has been charged with killing all five of them.

On Dec. 15, a 14-year-old girl in care was stabbed to death in downtown Winnipeg one day after she was released from custody by a judge who had expressed alarm over the lack of appropriate housing to keep her safe.

Last month, the government announced it was cutting ties with Spirit Rising House, a for-profit foster care provider. It contacted police after youth at the home were allegedly given pot.

During question period, Lamoureux asked the government how it works with CFS authorities to ensure sufficient oversight and to make sure children aren’t put in unsafe placements again.

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said regarding the slayings in Carman, she had immediately directed the department to work with the general authority to review all CFS contact leading up to it.

“I’m expecting or hoping to get that report by the end of April,” Fontaine said.

After question period, Premier Wab Kinew said he is open to calling an inquiry following the criminal proceedings if systemic questions remain unaddressed.

“If we’re still left with systemic questions, we will be very open to having an inquiry to help all Manitobans understand what went wrong and what can we do better in the future so that kids and families can be kept safe,” Kinew said after listing a litany of inquiries and reports in recent decades on how the system failed children in care and Indigenous people.

“I feel we know so much about what needs to be done,” the premier told reporters.

Lamoureux called on the government to take action, starting with boosting payments to foster parents.

“One of the reasons why we have so many problems in group homes and emergency shelters is there are simply not enough foster homes to ensure children have a safe and stable place to live,” said Lamoureux, who was joined at the legislature by close to 20 foster parents.

The Manitoba Foster Parents Association has been advocating for an increase in basic maintenance rates, which have been frozen since 2012.

“Every single agency is trying to recruit foster parents,” association president Jamie Pfau said flanked by more than a dozen other parents. “It’s becoming more challenging,” she said about continuing to provide care.

Manitoba provides $22 to 27 a day when double that amount is needed, she said.

Stone, the PC families critic, told the house it’s a non-partisan issue and they should “stand up for children and youth in care.”

Fontaine said her government’s priority is to “dismantle and decolonize” the child welfare system in which most of Manitoba’s nearly 9,000 kids in care are Indigenous. The province supports Indigenous leadership taking full control of their children in care under federal legislation, she said.

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Fontaine also said the province is close to negotiating a settlement related to a lawsuit, which was launched on behalf of kids in care, whose federal special allowance benefits were clawed back by Manitoba under the former NDP government in 2006 — a practice that ended in 2019 under the Tories.

The federal benefit goes to agencies that care for kids at an amount consistent with the federal child benefit, which is given to parents.

The cash is meant to pay for cultural and recreational opportunities such as music lessons and organized sport.

“I hope to have good news very soon about reaching a settlement,” Fontaine said Wednesday.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.