GNWT promises review after MLAs vote to support creation of child and youth advocate office
CBC
The N.W.T. cabinet says it will review whether or not the territory needs an independent child and youth advocate after a motion by Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart calling on it to establish such a position was carried in the legislative assembly.
All nine MLAs voted in favour of the motion on Feb. 26 while cabinet members abstained, saying they would carry out a review and come back with results.
A cabinet spokesperson said cabinet abstained from the vote as “standard practice” because the motion was directed to the government, and cabinet “reserves its position until it has fully considered those recommendations and can develop a collective GNWT response.”
“Abstaining ensures cabinet does not pre-judge that process,” the spokesperson said in a statement released to CBC News.
N.W.T. is the only jurisdiction in Canada that doesn’t have independent oversight of children in care.
Testart said his motion to have the government establish it, which was seconded by Monfwi MLA Jane Weyallon Armstrong, wasn’t just motivated by a single incident.
“In this case, it was the very serious stories I’m hearing from foster parents who are interacting with the child and family services system, which is failing a lot of kids,” Testart said in an interview with CBC News. “It’s not a knock on the social workers in that system. I think they’re just as frustrated. It’s the system itself.”
Cabinet Communications said the promised review will be comprehensive and will focus on “all existing oversight and complaint pathways related to children, youth and families."
“This work is necessary to determine whether creating an independent Office of the Child and Youth Advocate is the most effective approach or whether improvements to existing mechanisms could achieve the same or better outcomes,” the statement said.
There was no timeline set for the review.
The Auditor General of Canada released two reports on the N.W.T. child welfare system: one in 2014 and one in 2018.
The first found that two thirds of foster parents at the time had not been properly screened, and half of care plans weren’t monitored so authorities didn’t know if children were safe. The territory accepted the 11 recommendations in the report.
The 2018 audit found the N.W.T. had failed to improve conditions for children and described a system that struggled to follow through with the recommendations the government had agreed to. The system was short-staffed, and employees covered multiple jobs, which left major gaps in monitoring, it said.
The next AG report is expected in May.
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