Former deputy children’s minister Bob Plecas will lead a review of a child sexual abuse case in which a judge found social workers ignored or misled the courts and returned four children to their predatory father.
Children and Family Development Minister Stephanie Cadieux said she bypassed Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond for the job because of the child watchdog’s public remarks on the case.
“There were numerous comments made that related to this, to what the province should do,” Cadieux said. “And I felt it was important that we had a fresh set of eyes to look at the policy and practice related to this.”
Those comments drew the ire of Turpel-Lafond, who reserved the right to do her own independent investigation. “The government may not like the type of reports that this office prepares, but that doesn’t mean that they can bypass that,” she said.
Turpel-Lafond chastised Cadieux for suggesting that the representative’s public comments precluded her from reviewing a case.
“The minister is wrong on that front and she’s expressing her own bias,” Turpel-Lafond said.
“It is my obligation to comment on a case, especially when you have an extensive finding that there’s been a child that’s been sexually abused.”
Turpel-Lafond said she spoke in the media about the need to reopen a criminal investigation given the judge’s findings.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Paul Walker concluded that social workers sided with an abusive father in a bitter custody battle, failed to properly investigate the mother’s allegations of sexual abuse, wrongly apprehended her children and then provided false or misleading information to the judge to support the apprehension.
Walker concluded that social workers tainted a police investigation by inaccurately portraying the mother as mentally ill. He said they also disregarded a court order, thus allowing the father unsupervised access to his children, during which he sexually abused his youngest child.
The judge concluded that ministry employees “lost sight of their duties, professionalism and their objectivity.”
The government has not decided whether it will appeal Walker’s decision, but Cadieux said an external review is necessary to restore the ministry’s credibility and ensure protection of vulnerable children.
“Faith in the ministry has been shaken and I can understand why,” she said.
Plecas will work with the Child Welfare League of Canada.
His “short, intense” review will focus on improving the child welfare system rather than going on a “witch hunt,” he said. “I think people will speak with me because it’s a non-threatening exercise,” he said. “I may say some blunt things about how this has gone on and what things have happened, but I’m not looking to find fault in this exercise.”
A career civil servant in Social Credit and NDP governments, Plecas led a major reorganization in the late 1990s that created the Children’s Ministry following Judge Thomas Gove’s report on the child welfare system.
Plecas’s report is due Oct. 13 and will be released to the public by Oct. 21.
If Plecas raises “significant concern” about the actions of ministry staff, the Public Service Agency will launch its own human resources review, Cadieux said. Supervisors mentioned in Walker’s ruling have been reassigned to “non-practice” roles. “This is an interim measure and it is not punitive or disciplinary,” she said.
NDP Leader John Horgan criticized the narrow scope of the review, which, he said, should properly look at the role of Cadieux and other senior managers in overseeing the “heinous” case.
Horgan said Turpel-Lafond would be a better choice to bring her broad, investigative powers to bear on the case. “Let’s get someone who is actually interested in getting to the bottom of this, who will review everything, turn over every stone — not just the stones that are selected by the government,” he said.
Plecas, who has been out of government for 17 years, said his biggest challenge will be getting up to speed quickly and winning people’s trust. He does not anticipate a major overhaul of the ministry, which, he said, is doing good work. “Mistakes get made,” he said. “Let’s have a look and see if we can get it right back on course, right back on the course of doing what’s right for children who need help.”
