Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the Child and Family Services Review. I have strong concerns about the process, and the steps being taken.
I speak as a Northerner who is concerned about child welfare issues. I have spent 15 years in the health and social services field, many of it in the child welfare area, and as a MLA, I spent the last three years of the 13th Assembly on the Social Programs Committee.
I am interested in northern solutions to northern problems. I am interested in using the tremendous amount of skill, talent and northern expertise that we have developed in this area to reach those solutions.
What I see is a sole-sourced contract with an outfit from Yonge Street, totally bypassing any Northerner's involvement in this, except for the visiting of eight out of 33 communities and what can only be described, in my opinion, as a cursory public involvement given the incredibly short and compressed timeframes.
The Department of Health and Social Services has been telling us for at least two years they are working on this. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that what we see here is a compressed attempt to make up for two years of inactivity in this area, knowing they are going to be coming before the Social Programs Committee again, of which I have the good fortune to be a Member, to have to speak to this issue.
They will have to tell us why they are trying to deal with it in six weeks, with incredibly complex issues, doing 100 case audits of child welfare cases. Let alone all of the structural and program issues they are going to deal with. I submit, Mr. Speaker, it is physically impossible unless it is done in the most cursory and superficial way.
It is not rigorous. I look forward to the Minister tabling this report and standing up to tell us how she has managed to do all of this in six weeks in any in-depth way that is going to speak to these very fundamental issues that she said, and I agree with, are very emotional and important to all Northerners.
Mr. Speaker, I am not reassured by the Minister's comments. I know she has to defend this, but I do not think it is going to be adequate. The time is too short. The people may be well-intentioned, but the time is not there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.