Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a couple of items I wish to raise. The whole issue of the contract is one thing, the termination of the contract, the role of the contractor and the department is one issue. I, for one, don't believe the issue of terminating the contract is an issue I would concern myself with. I think there are several major missing issues that we have to discuss here. I was hoping there would be some indication of those in the terms of reference for the review, but they're not there.
The first one is the primary purpose of a home such as this. One of the roles and responsibilities of the department is the care of our children. Our honourable colleague from Yellowknife North made a very good statement today about the care of children, who cares for them and who speaks for them. That is one of the issues that is missing here.
Another one is the role and responsibilities of the homes we have, the group homes, receiving homes, whatever names we use, and our foster homes. There are contracts for all of these and agreements between the department and the people who provide care in whatever form and whatever type of home we use. I'm very familiar with the roles of foster parents, and I've passed these on to the various officials in your department over time because when I first became an MLA and also when we were travelling across the north with the Special Committee on Health and Social Services, we had lots of presentations and people talked to us privately.
Some of the issues are the role the foster parents play and the role the department plays. Both, hopefully, are on the same plane. The whole purpose is to look after the children who have been placed in the department's custody. The other issue, the third issue, is the whole role of Social Services employees and their supervisors. None of these are in the terms of reference tabled today.
The terms of reference are very specific, did the department have grounds to terminate the contract. Obviously, they had grounds or they wouldn't have done it, so why are we going through this whole investigation to determine that? The regional supervisor signed a letter of termination. Obviously, he was supported by the regional superintendent, the deputy minister and the Minister. So, I don't understand why we are wasting time to go through the chronological events of why the contract was terminated.
What I would like to see is some of the issues I have mentioned. It is my understanding that some of the obligations of social workers and the department is that there have to be designated people responsible for each home. There has to be a contact person for each resident. There has to be a program plan for each person put in care. In that plan, there is included some kind of assessment and some kind of treatment program. Both, whoever is caring for the individual and the department, would hopefully have open communication because they are both responsible for the care of that child.
Some of the complaints I've had across the north, and it is just not this particular case in Hay River, I hear complaints across the north that a lot of these things are not done. We know why. We know that social service workers are overworked. We know that in small communities, the worker is responsible for a wide range of programs.
We also know that kids, once they're apprehended, are dropped off, any hour of the day, in a foster home setting, usually with no history. The worker drops the kid off and the foster parent all of a sudden has full responsibility for this person. They have no medical history, no educational history, no history of behaviour or anything and then they're held responsible. If anything goes wrong, who gets the blame? I don't see any of these things in these terms of reference. I would like to see them.
The whole issue of roles and investigation into the roles of foster parents should be in here. Investigation of the roles of social workers should be in here. We should know the parties and what they're obligated to do, and whether they are doing it. I would like to hear from the Minister or her deputy on some of the comments I made and how they're going to address those issues.
