Adding more counsellors to help students deal with the criminal element in schools is like hiring accountants to fly aircraft, according to a counsellor on Victoria’s mobile youth services team.
Mia Golden, a veteran counsellor who has spent years working with the team, told the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board Tuesday night there is no substitute for having members of the police as school liaison officers.
“What has come up repeatedly is how the solution is to have more counsellors and less police. I’m a counsellor. I, of course, believe in my profession. I think we do wonderful work, but it’s akin to asking an accountant to fly a plane. They are two very different professions,” she said.
The focus for most school counsellors is not trauma counselling, she said. “Their mandate is scheduling, career goals, basic check-ins.”
Golden said it’s school counsellors and parents who call the mobile youth services team or MYST for support when they are worried about the safety of their children.
“I can do my part, and then my partner, who’s a police officer, does his part, which is significant,” she said, adding many more youth would still be exploited by their predators without the work of her police partner, Const. Gord Magee.
Golden’s impassioned address to the board was mainly directed at B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender, who appeared via video link from the Lower Mainland.
Govender had been invited by the board to hear a presentation from VicPD and the mobile youth service team on the negative effects of cancelling the school liaison program.
It was a letter from Govender in 2022 to the B.C. School Trustees Association that led to the Greater Victoria School Board voting last year to end the program. The move was opposed by both Victoria and Saanich chiefs of police, who warned gangs are recruiting in local schools.
In the letter, Govender recommended school-liaison officers no longer be posted at schools until the need for them can be proven, saying concerns about the presence of police officers in schools had been raised by “Indigenous, Black and other marginalized communities.”
Golden, who has been a counsellor for nearly 30 years, told Govender the number of youth the MYST team has been serving has increased significantly in recent years.
“The intensity of the work has increased dramatically and it’s only been made more intense and more challenging since the removal of the school liaison officers,” she said.
Golden said gang activity around schools has increased, as gangs know School District 61 no longer has a school liaison officer program, meaning it’s an “easier landscape to control,” while MYST has noticed an increase in sexual violence targeting young people.
Golden said in some cases, young students are afraid to use the school bathroom because of threats and sexual coercion.
“Children are literally not using the washroom because of the fear of what kind of harm will take place when they go to the bathroom,” she said.
Govender, however, was adamant that school boards should end school liaison officer programs unless they can demonstrate an evidence-based need for them that cannot be met through other means.
“We’ve just heard anecdotal evidence, but I think it’s quite telling that what we didn’t hear in that is comprehensive, credible data to back that up,” she said. “For example, any data used to show that crime rates involving youth went up this year do not show that the cancellation of the SLO programs was responsible for this. And that’s a classic fallacy where correlation is mistaken for causation.
“We have no evidence about the impact of this program. All of this data or this lack of data taken together is enough to raise a serious and reasonable concern that SLO programs might cause more harm than good.”
Govender said she recommended the province do the research and gather evidence two and half years ago and to date nothing has been done.
Police board co-chair Barb Desjardins said while there was disappointment around the table Tuesday night, they have at least started a dialogue and gleaned more information from the commissioner.
“I think the disappointment was we weren’t able to make a change and that she really, through her research and methodology, stuck to her original position,” Desjardins said.
“I think we’ve gained information and we are continuing to have conversations with School District 61, and I think the other option is that we need to speak to the province and see whether we can get some of that research done. There has to be some change to allow improved safety of our children and our communities, because this goes beyond just in the schools.”
Victoria police hadn’t participated in the school police liaison officer program since 2018 due to budget shortfalls, but Police Chief Del Manak — a former school-liaison officer himself — has said he would like it to be reinstated.
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