I guess it’s an issue of how we interpret words. To me, establish child and family service committees means that you will work to establish those committees. The word “work” is in there. The verb is in there. To me there’s an action

involved in that. The Minister states that they intended to do things as they have done it in the past. Well, that’s no action at all. One child and family service committee was organized in Fort McPherson. It fell apart. It’s maybe gotten back together again. I fail to see how this statement, an action to work with communities to establish committees, doesn’t indicate that there will be some work on the part of the department. Work on the part of the department translates into money. Time is money. Staff would have to be doing something. I really fail to understand how the Minister can say that this action is here but it’s not going to cost any money. In my view that has been done in the last five or 10 years and it has translated into zero. If you’re not doing anything, absolutely you’re not going to get any results.

I really am distressed that we approved the business plan as a committee. I certainly did, as a member of the committee, based on what was on the business plan. I, unfortunately, believed what was on the paper. I don’t know if the Minister is suggesting that business plans don’t matter, that what’s on the paper can change so don’t worry about it. Maybe we don’t even need to bother to read business plans, because the department can turn around and interpret the words on the paper almost any way they want. Because that’s what I’m hearing right now. I’m really quite disturbed.

The other part that the Minister has referenced is that the Child and Family Services Act review report suggests a really robust action to set up these child and family service committees. I guess it’s a matter of defining “robust.” I’m reading from the report and it says “amend the act to require the director to provide funds, salary for a committee coordinator, per diems for members’ training, and support to child and family service committees.” I think that’s the same as “work to set up committees; (b) allow flexibility of mandate and function for the committees so that the communities can create a model appropriate to their culture and situation, and (c) allow and encourage child and family service committee members to participate in the process and develop the supporting policy.” That’s not very robust in my mind. I guess if you interpret work to set up committees as spending no money, then, yes, this recommendation is pretty robust because it says spend some money.

I have to say that the Minister in her communications to committee relative to the issues that we’ve got and the lack of funding have taken the most expensive assessment of what we’re looking for. A number of times in the report I believe we referenced child and family service committees which needed to be flexible, which could be combined with other organizations within the communities that are already established. The community justice committees was one that was mentioned. There are interagency committees in a

number of communities. They certainly could belong to that. There’s a huge amount of flexibility in how the child and family service committees could be set up. They don’t need to be funded to the tune of the amount of money that’s in the letter that we got from the Minister.

I didn’t hear the Minister answer the question from Mr. Beaulieu. She suggests that child protection workers need to be trained to the tune of $125,000 a year. I really have to question, if we have child protection workers that need that kind of training, they shouldn’t be in the business of child protection I don’t think. In my mind, a child protection worker is a trained social worker and I really am not understanding what kind of training they need to work with a child and family service committee. It’s a matter of being able to communicate and if social workers can’t communicate, we’re in big trouble. I guess I’d like to ask the Minister again why we have to spend $125,000 to train child protection workers for child and family service committees.