Canadian Lawyer

w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 47 "The most vulnerable citizens" In December — just weeks after Ontario announced it was shuttering its Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth — Manitoba's child advocate released a report describing the tragic story of a 17-year-old Indigenous girl, identified only as Angel, who had died of a drug overdose. During her short life she had had 46 foster-home place- ments, had been repeatedly sexually abused and exploited from the time she was a tod- dler, and had tried to commit suicide when she was just 11 years old. "Her story as you read it is one that stands out as a shocking reminder that too many chil- dren and youth in our communities are sub- ject to immense trauma and taken too soon," Manitoba child advocate Daphne Penrose was quoted as saying after releasing a 117-page report in mid-December on Angel's death. Her recommendations called for provin- cial officials to develop trauma prevention strategies with experts in childhood trauma and to ensure appropriate interventions were made to address "the trauma crisis" in Manitoba. The announced closing of Ontario's child advocate office leaves Canada's most populous province with Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in not having a child advocate, and Ontario's Office of the Ombudsman, where the child advocacy services will be moved, will not likely fill the gap, say experts. "If you're a teenager or a tween [in state care], a worker gives you the child advocate's number," says John Schuman, a family lawyer at Devry Smith Frank LLP in Toronto with expertise in child protection proceedings. "You speak to someone who understands you're a kid, and the situation you're in. The person there can understand why you're there. They get what's going on. It's a system that would be geared towards kids as the Kids Help line is geared towards them." Now, says Schuman, a child or youth may call the provin- cial Ombudsman's office and the person on the other end of the line may or may not have appropriate training, under- stand the situation or have a background in dealing with kids or understanding their needs. The Ontario government's move means "total inaccessibility to kids," he says. Turpel-Lafond says there are two reasons why a child advo- cate's office is important and should be independent; first, she says, individuals want to access a service with an appearance of independence that is able to serve their population. Sec- ond, to create such an office, legislation must be tabled in the assembly, which draws legislators' attention "so they can stay focused and engaged" with child welfare, she says. "Sometimes when government decides to cut back, chil- dren and youth are on the chopping block first," she adds; yet her experience as B.C.'s child advocate, from 2006 to 2016, shows that this is short-sighted. Turpel-Lafond says that prior to her appointment "they had shut the office down [and] the situation quickly careened into a crisis." She was charged with cleaning up the mess and addressing all the outstanding files, including those for 900 child deaths, and complaints that children hadn't been well-served. "I've opened an office after B.C. made the same mistake that Ontario is mak- ing now," she says. "My guess is that when it comes time to cut funding, [governments] look for com- munity services," says Rollie Thompson, a family law pro- fessor at Dalhousie's Schulich School of Law. "In an under- funded system like Ontario's, this is not good news." Another factor in closing advocate offices, he says, is that governments don't like "anyone looking into our child protection laws. It's wrong-headed," he says; governments don't want people to be critical of their protection of children, "but they severely underfund child protection. Child and youth advocates will inevitably point out problems," which "put gov- ernments on the hot seat." "Sometimes when government decides to cut back, children and youth are on the chopping block first … [B.C.] had shut the [child advocate's] office down [and] the situation quickly careened into a crisis." Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C. Representative for Children and Youth ntitled-3 1 2019-01-17 12:27 PM

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