B.C.’s child welfare system will get an injection of money in next week’s provincial budget, despite receiving barely a mention in the throne speech, Finance Minister Mike de Jong said Wednesday.
De Jong said providing additional support to the Ministry of Children and Family Development will be a priority in light of reports by Grand Chief Ed John and former deputy minister Bob Plecas.
“All [the reports] included some fairly significant recommendations about the need for additional resources,” de Jong said. “And we are anxious to address that, and will, in the budget.”
John, a special adviser to the ministry, released a report in late November calling for an overhaul of B.C.’s indigenous child-welfare system.
Plecas released a report in 2015 calling on government to hire more social workers, improve training and expand quality-assurance programs. The government responded last February by promising to increase the ministry’s budget by $217 million over three years.
NDP leader John Horgan, however, questioned the government’s commitment to fixing the system given the mounting number of tragic deaths.
“The story remains the same,” Horgan said. “The government professes concern and does nothing.”
He said that one of the first things the Liberals did upon taking power in 2001 was cut resources to the children’s ministry. “And they’ve been playing catch-up ever since,” he said.
“I have great respect for the social workers that do their best to protect children in British Columbia. They do not have the resources.”
The Opposition devoted the first question period of the legislative session Wednesday to grilling government officials about the case of Alex Gervais, an 18-year-old Métis youth who took his own life in 2015 at the hotel where he had been living in government care.
Horgan cited that case and others as evidence of the government’s ineptitude.
“My question to the premier is: After all of these failures, year after year after year, why should anyone who is concerned about vulnerable children believe a word this government says?”
Premier Christy Clark responded to questions by promising more money for the children’s ministry in the budget.
“We are going to continue to implement new policies within the ministry, and we are going to continue to devote more resources from government to make sure that we support social workers in the work that they do,” she said.
