Thank you, Mr. Chair. The motion that is before us is just to ensure that we do get a response from the government. The report was read into the House yesterday and a lot of committee members and Regular Members also made some good response to it. I think we addressed a lot of the concerns from stakeholders as well as residents of the Northwest Territories and look forward to moving this motion and getting a response from the government.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Does committee agree that consideration of Committee Report 17-17(5) is concluded?

Thank you, committee. Committee Report 17-17(5) is concluded.

Committee, we’ll continue with the orders here. Committee, we agreed to consider Bill 47, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act. I’ll go to the Minister responsible for the bill to introduce it. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to be here to discuss Bill 47, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act.

Bill 47 is the result of four years of work by the department and would not have been possible without the interest and dedication to the Child and Family Services Act demonstrated by the people of the Northwest Territories as well as Members of the Standing Committee on Social Programs from both the 16th and 17th Legislative Assemblies.

The primary purpose of the Child and Family Services Act is to protect children and youth from harm, and the amendments proposed in this bill allow us to focus on less intrusive measures wherever and whenever possible.

While the bill will address many gaps in services for children and youth, we know the work does not end there. This legislation provides the foundation for keeping families and communities together as much as possible and the department will continue working to achieve this.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Social Programs, community members, front-line workers, and families for their significant contribution to the development of this bill.

I would be pleased to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Committee, I will now turn it over to the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs to consider the bill for opening comments. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I too would like to thank the department for bringing this very important bill forward. I’d also like to thank committee for their thorough review of Bill 47, as well as all stakeholders and community members, residents and interested groups who provided very strong feedback and recommendations that I believe committee tried to address to the best of their ability with concurrence from the department of course.

In the bill itself there were five motions that the Minister concurred with. There’s a lot of history with this bill dating right back to 1977, but I also want to acknowledge the work that was done by the previous Standing Committee on Social Programs in the 16th Legislative Assembly for doing the hard work that they did in bringing forth the 2010 committee report and the work that our committee continued that momentum to get where the bill is now.

I’d like to thank all involved and I look forward to moving forward with this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. We’ll now go to the Minister to see if he would like to bring witnesses into the House. Minister Abernethy.

Yes, I would, thank you.

Thank you. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you can please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

Minister Abernethy, can you please introduce your witnesses to the House.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today on my right is Debbie DeLancey, who is the deputy minister of Health and Social Services. On my left is Thomas Druyan, who is the legislative counsel. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Mr. Druyan and Ms. DeLancey, thank you and welcome back to the House. Committee, we’re going to open this up to general comments. General comments on Bill 47. That we’ll start with Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make some comments on this bill similar to the comments that I made the other night when we reviewed the bill clause by clause.

As the Minister said, this has been a long time coming. It’s four years of work by the department, but it started with work in the 16th Assembly, as has been mentioned. I’m very glad to see that these amendments are here. They don’t go as far as I would have liked them to have gone, but certainly it’s going to address a gap in our services for youth, which has been a concern for Members since 2010 when we did the review of the Child and Family Services Act in the 16th Assembly.

I think it is going to improve our services. It will also bring us in line with being lawful. We were basically contravening the rights of youth by not having a provision in our act. So, I’m very glad to see that this is coming forward.

I spoke in the reading of the report about kinship care and this was a term that sort of came to committee through our discussions and deliberations on the bill and on changes that we wanted to see in the bill. I think it’s indicative of the premise that certainly I would like to see and I think committee would like to see on how children are cared for when they need to be removed from their family. It should be our guiding principle that the child stays within the community but also within the extended family or with someone who is very close to the family as opposed to removing them from the family altogether. We started calling it kinship care. It includes grandparents; and many, many times grandparents in our territory take over the maintenance and the care of the children when their own children can’t look after the grandchildren. So, right now it’s very difficult for grandparents to do that. Many do, but they don’t get the support that they need from the department and we need to ensure, when we enact the provisions of this particular act, that we have in mind the child needs to stay with the family and extended family.

When we were travelling and doing public hearings in the communities, I have to say that we heard a great deal of scepticism from residents who were commenting on the amendments to Bill 47 and just on the Child and Family Services Act and programs in general. Things have been broken, so to speak, for a very long time and the people that spoke to us were people that had been involved in the system and the system had not treated them well or had not afforded them an opportunity to keep their children or to treat their children properly, or in the case of grandparents they weren’t able to look after their children without having to basically put themselves into poverty in order to do it. So, there was a lot of scepticism because of their past experience that these improvements to the act were actually going to have some effect. So, I urge the department to try to break that scepticism down, try to ensure that the act, with these changes, shows people that we are well meaning and we can succeed; we can keep children in the home in the community with their extended family.

We spent a lot of time, as well, in committee talking about mediation and I feel, and I think committee feels as well, very strongly that mediation should be used to the utmost before the situation goes to court and the child needs to be apprehended through the court process. We suggested an amendment, to which the Minister did not concur. I’ll talk a bit about that when we get to that clause, but it is important that we, as much as possible, avoid going to court, avoid apprehension and that as much as possible we use mediation to solve the differences between the family and the child or the family and other members of the family.

Child and family services committees were a focus of discussion as well. The act has mandated child and family services committees since it was first written and they haven’t worked. A number of times, certainly in the public hearing, I asked the Minister why we were trying to amend the act and give these committees greater jobs, greater power, so to speak, when they haven’t worked for some 10 or 15 years. So, I want to urge the Minister… I think there is a willingness on the part of the Minister and department to certainly look at child and family services committees and removing them from the act. I want to urge the Minister to do that. There are other ways and there are different jurisdictions in Canada but also different jurisdictions in the world that have different ways of doing the same sort of thing that a child and family services committee would do. Sometimes they’re called Family Group Conferences, which would be, I think, similar to a child and family services committee but it would involve people that are directly related to the child as opposed to another member of the community. So, I urge the department to look at that. I don’t think we need to have it in legislation to employ that sort of an approach to dealing with a child in a particular situation, or a family in a situation.

Lastly, I’d like to just comment, as well, on the collaboration that committee and the department had on this particular bill. It was very similar to Bill 44 yesterday. We went back and forth. We tried to understand where each side was coming from and we then put forward a number of amendments, most of which were agreed to and I think, like a lot of the bills that we’ve reported on in this sitting in the last number of days and weeks, these bills have been made better for the fact that we collaborated and that we worked together to make a better bill. As I said yesterday, I hope that this is something that continues, that it’s sort of a mindset that is going to set in and is going to continue as we deal with bills going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Continuing on with questions and general comments I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank certainly the committee and the Minister and his staff for pulling this legislation together late in our term, but it’s getting done. I guess my first comment would be that there have been some really unconscionable delays in this work. This is the result of, finally, the third or a combination of three reports over the years. I was involved in the second report and it made a strong impression on me, touring across the Northwest Territories, as I know it did the Minister who was with us at the time as a Regular Member. So, it’s very good to see this finally happening to the degree that it is.

It is an important recognition of the need to act and hopefully it is the beginning. I know the Minister has been working on putting things in place. There is so much to be done and so much effort that he has attempted that has not been done yet. A simple example of that is the software. We had child and family service workers screaming for help with the software program which simply did not recognize the structure of families in the Northwest Territories and was so slow, and I assume it’s that way today. This is years and years ago. So, you know, severe issues in terms of our ability to deliver what we want to deliver, and seemingly simple solutions that are proving insurmountable, at least in a timely way.

Of course, there’s a very long-standing complete injustice to the 17 to 19-year-olds, and sometimes older. These children are coming from very challenged backgrounds, and not surprisingly, they need support. I have a lot of relatives and, my gosh, they certainly wouldn’t turn away from the support they received right up through their early and mid-twenties, and neither would I. So, how could we have possibly thought for so long that we could dump these people out of the support system onto the street at the age of 17?

So, again, that simple act alone is huge for me, and I really appreciate that getting done. And I hope that it’s not just on paper now. So, lots of kudos there.

I think the committee has done a sterling job at recognizing a complete rewrite is required. Again, that’s consistent with some of the earlier work that was done. What stands out for me is the need to embed or imbue the legislation with the mediation alternative dispute resolution approach. I think it is best exemplified by BC, although I am not on top of the legislation now for other jurisdictions.

Also, a recognition that we need to really improve how we extend support to those extended family members who are called upon or willing to play a role in supporting children in need when the event occurs. I know we have done some work on that, and I appreciate that, but there still seems to be, as the committee has stressed here, a need and an opportunity to do some more work in that area.

I want to leave it at that. This is a very, very serious issue. We have hundreds of people and hundreds of children in care, and by a very large margin, Aboriginal children. Where there is need is clear and I think the issues are clear, and it is now up to us to respond to that clarity with similar efforts on both the legislative and the delivery end of things. This is the legislative end of things. I am very pleased to see this start and I hope this is profiled in our transition to the 18th Assembly, as recommended by the committee, and that we could also urge translation of this legislation into actual activity on the ground, similarly effectively. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Continuing on with general comments I have Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it’s a very great day in terms of the child and family services system. As you heard from my colleagues, it has been a very long process getting to where we are today with the amendments that we made and some of the motions that we’re bringing forth after listening to our residents in the Northwest Territories.

I think what really sparked a lot of us moving forward but also work from our Regular Members and not just the standing committee was that the OAG report and all the findings that were in there that were very hard to, I guess you could say hard to take in or swallow. We needed to do something and that for too long supports were not there for our families, not there for our children and even supports where not there for folks who were providing support. I think we need to really address those gaps in services.

As you heard from my colleagues here, the history of the bill goes way back. I made mention 1977 there was a report and some of those recommendations that we are seeing out of that report way back than we are seeing today. I am glad that we have a government here and a Minister who is willing to make those changes and stand up with his staff.

I just want to highlight a few things that we heard while we were on the road. First of all, just the complexity of the voluntary service agreements, and that goes to the parenting skills and family and the social place that a family is in to actually make those kinds of agreements.

As we have heard, working with extended family and grandparents, kinship care was a big discussion in some of the communities. Really what we needed – and we have heard about it in the media – is our grandparents taking, I won’t say custody, but taking the responsibility to take care of our most vulnerable and not getting the financial services that they need to do that. Or even the essential services such as extra food or even clothing for the children. It does put a financial burden on our grandparents, some who are on pension or, in some cases, don’t even have a pension.

I won’t get into mediation. You’ve heard a little bit about that before. Temporary custody, some of the research behind the days for temporary custody I think served well, and we had a lot of really good response from our residents.

One big thing that we heard, especially in some of the smaller communities, was our approach to apprehensions, or our approach to foster care and that. As a government we really need to work with some of our Aboriginal groups to what they call as Dene law. Look at our cultural approaches, our traditions, and looking at the values. When you look at the values, it was discussed from one of our former chiefs talking about putting love into it, caring and sharing, Aboriginal values that have gone for so long. Rather than just apprehension we have to look at doing that not only for our children but our families as well.

Other issues that were brought up that weren’t really addressed in the bill but I think need to be taken into consideration were some of these frivolous complaints or allegations against foster families without proper investigations. Some foster families feel that they were targeted and really needed to be able to express their side of the story without having probably the best interest of the child at hand. The plan of care agreements was very important, that we needed those in place moving forward and I think that will be addressed in our new bill.

Also, just the supports for alternative options, which is in the new bill here as well. But when you go into communities like Deline, we heard that they don’t have the supports. They don’t have the counselling or the addictions support for families or for anybody who might be going through the system. As a result, one thing that is really evident is keeping the child not only in the home but in the community. If you don’t have those supports in the community then it really reflects hard on our families, especially the ones that want to continue to promote our culture, our traditions and our languages, and that was focused on.

We also heard that the Child and Family Services Act should also work very strongly with our Mental Health Action Plan. We got that from and I think this department has been very strong in creating some of these new initiatives in the course of this government and making sure that they work collaboratively together to see some very positive outcomes for our families, our residents and our communities across the Northwest Territories.

As I mentioned earlier, I think that we need to focus on keeping the child in the community and providing the supports for our families.

One really unique thing that was brought up was a foster kids’ support group. We have a lot of kids in foster care and I know that they go through a lot of difficult times, especially with mental health issues, and to have that kind of support group with like-minded people in the same state and same circumstance will be able to provide strong support for one another.

There was also talk about victim services coordinators’ support, not only support from them but supporting the victim service coordinator.

When we went and talked with the Tlicho Community Services Agency, we asked them about what services they had. They mentioned that they actually hired three new staff to address the needs that were in the Tlicho communities. They know what’s going on. They know that they need more resources. They know that there are barriers there and that they really needed to address those, and they did hire three new staff which, in my case, was a very proactive role.

Discussions about foster families, inspections, training, those need to be held in place. We did hear from some foster families who said their houses were never inspected. They never went through any training and they were very scared about if that’s the case, what’s happening with families who might be out there that aren’t as compassionate as they are.

I just want to share a quote from somebody we heard in one of the small communities. “We need a lot of help in the communities. The programs right now do not work. There is no support and there is no training.”

Further to that I would like to share another quote from one of the elders: “Child and family services is a very big responsibility for very important decisions that need to be made. It’s good to sit and talk together and we need to find answers together to make sure this works.”

I made a statement in the House last week that deals with respite care for children. I think that needs to be taken into consideration. We don’t want to put more stress on some of our foster families or even just our families. Outreach workers, transitional housing and the amount of caseload that workers have was very big. There was emphasis that the Department of Health and Social Services should work closely with our Education, Culture and Employment department to look at creating community school and community counsellors and looking at those. Also, a focus on the special needs of children, the special needs of families, creating safe houses. Also, putting a focus on parenting skills was another one that came to mind.

As with Bill 44, when we went into the communities outside the scope of this bill, we did hear a lot of concerns that dealt with justice, that dealt with health, housing and, of course, within the Department of Health and Social Services that showed that even though we focused on the two bills, there was a lot more that needed to be addressed in our communities. A lot of members of the communities were very happy that we made the time and sat down, and even the discussions after the meetings were done, sidebar discussions that we had with our residents that are affected by these two bills.

In closing, I would just like to thank all stakeholders, community members who came out and gave their input into this bill. Of course, I’d like to thank the department, their staff for all the hard work that they did not only into Bill 47 but Bill 44 as well. I think we’ve come a long way in the consensus style government in looking at creating concurrent to the motions that the standing committee brought forward shows that the department is willing to make the best bill possible.

Lastly, I would just like to thank committee. Taking two significant bills on the road was a challenge, but the effort and commitment and dedication that we had towards that, you guys all did a great job. Specifically, to our staff researcher and our clerks, our Law Clerks’ and our staff clerks’ behind-the-scenes work to make sure that this went smoothly. Once again, to all Members who helped us get these bills and public hearings together in the communities, I appreciate your work.

As I said, as we have been working in the past, Bill 44, 47, all the amendments, all the collaborative work we’ve been doing, we look forward to making future bills the best bills they can be; and I know the Minister knows what I’m referring to, and that’s the Mental Health Act. With that, I’d just like to thank the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Next on the list for general comments on Bill 47, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I too would like to welcome the Minister and the department here today. At the sake of not echoing the very same sentiments of my colleagues here, a lot of passion has gone into this bill. The Minister would definitely know that. The Minister himself, as a Regular Member, travelled to these very same communities in the 16th Assembly and took part in one of the major reports that is mentioned in the report and some of the compass headings that this committee has to use to navigate through what was pretty trying times for a number of our residents in the Northwest Territories.

I want to take just a brief note to point out that nowhere in this report that we did earlier is there mention, I believe, of the Auditor General report that was recently done, and there is probably a reason for that, because I believe we need to differentiate the Auditor General report on child and family services and the report that we refer to in our report as the 2010 report, which was done by the previous Assembly. There’s a reason for that.

The Auditor General of Canada report was more to do with the compliance with the act, in our humble opinion. This was about the fact that we weren’t following the law of the day, and a lot of the recommendations in there had to do with the government adhering and following the very legislation that it was compelled to follow. That’s a very distinct difference to what we refer to as a lot of the recommendations we saw in the 2010 report which talked about improvement to the process, improvement to services, improvement to the so-called different levels of activity which makes us a better tool, so to speak, with dealing with the most vulnerable in society, the ones that are in our care. I want to make that clear distinction between the two, is that even after we do this act and hopefully pass this act, the onus is still on the department to be in compliance with this new act, and that’s the challenge that I’m still going to be watching. As a Member, and I’m sure Members here as well, is that just because we’ve updated legislation, we still need to make sure that the department and everyone involved from the Minister all the way down to that caseworker at the ground level, we’ve got to follow this act. This is not an optional program. I want to make that perfectly clear.

Let’s talk a bit about why we’re here. We’re talking about Bill 47, and a lot of the changes that we have before us are procedural changes. We’re tightening up some of the processes. It’s interesting that just recently in the media the Truth and Reconciliation Committee with Justice Murray Sinclair announced a very compelling statement the other day about the fact that this was cultural genocide, and it did make reference to the residential school effects of many of our Northerners affecting us and across Canada. But importantly, they talked about the foster plan and foster care across Canada, which we also are a part of. When I see and hear those types of compelling words, cultural genocide, it does make me think that whatever we do here has a significant impact for many of our children, and many of the children that are in care are First Nations. We’ve got to be very, very careful that we do not get lumped into this area because, by de facto, we are. So, everything we do, we have to, I guess, that degree of acumen we’ve got to bring to the table to make sure that we are improving that so that we are moving forward as a society against some of the atrocities that governments have done in the past which affected even some of the people in this room. I just wanted to make that also clear.

It’s unfortunate that it’s taken five years from the 2010 report from the previous Assembly that has now brought a lot of these amendments to Bill 47, and really, yes, we did strengthen a lot of areas up. It’s not all doom and gloom. We did tighten up a lot of the processes. But what we’ve heard many times on the ground in a lot of the communities that we serviced, and one of the quotes that we had here in our report and if I may just for a second indulge, is that one long-time foster parent said, “When I look around at what services are available, I see nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.” Four times. I wish I could say that was the only time we heard that comment, but it wasn’t. We heard this time and time again. A lot of our communities do not have enough caseworkers. We don’t have enough social workers. I think that we really have to put a lot of thought behind when we’re doing our business plans, our operational business plan, and I know the Minister of Finance is listening here. We’ve got to think about this. This is something to which we’ve heard time and time again. We need more boots on the ground; we need more help in the smaller communities; and I think we definitely need to hear the people, because they were telling us loud and clear.

Now, you did hear the concept of kinship care. Relatively, probably, a new term, but really the principles are very simple. Keep children in the family. Keep children in the community. That’s the definition, and do so in a way that really, a lot of the areas around the temporary service agreements where you need to get consent of the parents involved tend to be problematic. We want to get these children in a safe environment as soon as we can, and so there is opportunity here. We heard that. Not part of the scope of this bill but, quite frankly, something that we can do and we should do, and we should not wait five years to do it. We’re going to challenge the department to come up with ways to work within the temporary service agreement, de facto to which we can get these children into custody and care within the family as soon as we can. But more importantly, let’s make sure that these grandparents, these grand-uncles and aunts are able to get the same type of financial help at the same time. We can’t expect these people to do it for nothing. We’re partners in this. We’re part of that triangle of care, and if we can’t do that then there’s a problem. It’s just the wish and will of committee to bring that forward to the department and say, “We’ve got to fix it.”

I do want to comment, though, the fact that we’re extending the youth services to age 23. I think that was well received by many people and I want to commend it.

You also heard the issue of the mediation. Now, I can understand the fact of mandatory mediation or trying to get that type or level of mediation in all communities. I recognize there is a huge cost involved. I understand wholeheartedly. However, we heard time and time again, we need to look at improving that. I don’t have the magic bullet, but I know you’ve got a department. Through you, Mr. Chair, I know that the Minister has a department of able-bodied, very smart people in these departments. We’ve got to figure out a way. We’ve got to find a hybrid.

Last, but not least, I want to talk about the foster families themselves. These are the people who open up their homes across the Northwest Territories. We had the opportunity to speak to numerous foster families that came forward and shared their stories and shared their hardships and shared some of the struggles they have, but more importantly, one common theme that I heard time and time again is that, “We need help. We need a break.” “I’ve got a family of my own,” someone said, “but you know what? I’m looking after two or three foster kids, but we need a break. Mom and Dad need a break.” We have no tools for Mom and Dad to have a break. There are no respite-type programs. I echo that loud and clear. We need to figure out a way to help out these foster families.

Some of the recommendations and suggestions are that we have an annual summer camp and some of them are scattered throughout the Northwest Territories. One of them here is just north of Yellowknife, and that summer camp is a great program. These children get together; they build bonds; they build relationships; they’ve got caring circles. I’ve attended some of their engagements and these are some great kids, but we do that once a year, once a summer. Why can’t we do it at Christmastime? Why can’t we do it at Easter break? Why can’t we do it other times of the year? Let’s give these foster families some respite care. Let’s give them a little bit of a break so they can tend maybe to their own children or, better yet, so that they can tend to themselves. Foster families need vacations too. They need a break. We owe it to them. We’re partners in this.

So I do want to commend the department. We did make some huge strides in child and family services, but as I said and I started off at the beginning, this does not talk about the compliance to the act, which the Auditor General of Canada has clearly pointed out. We need to do better in compliance. I know in my own heart that the department is listening, and I know the Minister is committed to making sure that compliance is on the radar and will be followed to the letter. I’m hoping that’s indeed the case.

So again, in closing, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this. I want to thank my colleagues as well. It was a very trying couple of weeks on the road. Most of my colleagues were ill. Some of them had to suffer through colds, flus, and they persevered, through snow storms and everything, uphill both ways, wearing their rubber boots. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, department.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Committee, we’re on general comments on Bill 47. General comments. I’ll go to the Minister and allow him to make some comments. Minister Abernethy.