Here is a cause about which many of you can become excited. This is a cause that our legislators, Members of Parliament, Representative of Children and Youth, Attorney General, Ombudsperson, and Minister of Children and Family Development can now be challenged to consider. Why don't we try championing the protection of children by empowering parents. Wow! Now there is a concept!
It resonates particularly if you have become concerned about losing personal freedoms within today's political climates. When government is allowed to determine what is best for children based upon the subjective interpretations of such matters as nutrition, nurture, dress, living accommodation, values education, general education and faith practices in specific families about which authorities have been alerted by anonymous tips registering concern, then many of you might object. Wouldn't it be helpful to have a Canadian or provincial statute upon which you could depend.
ParentalRights.org is urging support for SR 519. SR 519, The Parental Rights Amendment, would mandate the rights of parents as sole guardians of their children. It contains three basic sections.
- The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.
- Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.
- No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article. [2]
If you know of a legal document that already provides this to Canadians or British Columbians, please let readers and me know.
This is a tough one.
ReplyDeletePeople think that they have this right as it is reflects natural law... Until they have visit from CPS or other governmental representatives.
Repeal CFCSA first, then enshrine child custody in our constitution. It is difficult and dangerous. Special interests will fight back tooth and nail. Someone need to start this. It is a cause worth try dying.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an appropriate order of action, repeal CFCSA and then Enshrine.
ReplyDeleteCompare other areas of law to the proposed rights amendment:
ReplyDeleteParental abduction is an international parent-specific law that recognizes the importance of parenting and the damage, psychological and financial that can be done due to separation of children from their parents, regardless of the justification.
If the separation is later deemed to be wrong, someone has to pay a price as a future deterrent for that mistake. CFCSA and all other statutes protect operators from such “mistakes” so they are free to repeat.
This law includes recognition that needlessly removing children from their parents by another parent, unilaterally without due process results in a significant loss to both the parent the child, who has been deprived of contact with the parent for a momentarily valid reason.
Abduction is defined as:
"A stranger removes a child, with the intent to rear the child as their own"
This is MCFD!
The “out” for abduction is the parent has to show they are protecting the children in their act of unilateral removal. The assumption here is parents have a vested interest in initiating separation, but MCFD does not.
Until clear evidence is produced a “vested interest” exists, low evidence thresholds and difference of evidence justifications for removals and lengthy retentions of children will continue around the world.
Others have made the observation by stating that separate child protection laws are redundant to existing criminal laws.
ReplyDeleteThis new proposed right is parent-specific, and there is no definition of parent.
"Parent" has a very loose definition these days. MCFD is a parent, step-parents, surrogate parents and gay unions are some examples. Schools are viewed as temporary parents from the hours of 9am-3pm. Daycare operators are viewed in a similar fashion.
Child protection statues are specifically designed to circumvent existing laws and upend rights and freedoms by raising the value of a child beyond that of the parent by mere opinion of an infraction. It would continue to do so with this new proposed parents rights addition.
Should I suspend the license of a car owner for driving too fast or cutting in front of someone (parhaps a bus full of children) before a trial is heard in a year or two? Should the government pay for limo for the person to get to and from work during the wait for trial?
If you transpose some concepts, it is possible to show how ridiculous child protection has become.
With respect to repealing just the CFCSA, there is a similar argument with HST that states the current path to repeal this federally-originated law is pointless.
ReplyDeleteWhat about all other Provinces whose statutes facilitates removal rates as high or higher than BC?
Generally speaking, child protection is its current implementation is a flawed concept. Repealing CFCSA would make B.C. appear anti-child.
A precedent to repeal just the removal aspect is needed on the same scale as pronouncing gay marriages is legal. The logic demonstrated has to be irrefutable, universally accepted, and be seen just as barbaric to return to an upended system as it would be to revive residential schools.
Once this is successful in one state or Province, the change will ripple to other areas. It may be necessary to first identify the province or state with the biggest problem, or has the best chance to repeal their statue, then go from there.
Child protection should simply become an arm of law enforcement. One officer per precinct is usually sufficient to handle the volume of true child protection associate with proven assault.
If parents are physically removed, they should still retain rights as parents and restore their duties the moment penance is paid. MCFD's free daycare would end and children would be returned to parents to resume their duties without legal fanfare.
With referent to child welfare, strip off child removal authority and treat them as just a service that cares for children. An entity with temporary care abilities, parents always stay parents.
To yesterdays arguer about incompetence. You obviously did not read carefully enough what I wrote yesterday. I did not say there was no malice. Nor are incompetence and malice mutually exclusive. I specifically said so yesterday when I said that incompetence breeds fear. In turn fear can breed malice, cruelty and any other nasty thing you care to mention. All of these things are evident in the Bayne case. Incompetence, insensitivity, cowardice, stupidity and dishonesty. They could have backed down when their lawyer advised them to and come out looking not too bad. Dithering, they painted themselves into a corner and then turned on the Baynes to save themselves.
ReplyDeletePleeeease, why does someone have to make such a spurious statement that we are all incompetent etc? What on earth is the point? Is it not obvious that we are all competent in some things and incompetent in others? Most of us know our areas of competence, because we all do many things successfully and confidently. We also know our limitations in other areas. Comments like that may sound clever for the moment, but what help are they to this situation?
A good analogy of child protection investigation is demonstrated by this joke:
ReplyDeleteOne day, a driver saw the flash of a traffic camera. The reasoning was that a picture had been taken for exceeding the limit even though the driver knew he was not speeding.
Just to be sure, the driver around the block and passed the same spot, driving even more slowly, but again the camera flashed.
Even more curious, the driver drove even slower passing the area once more, the traffic camera again flashed.
A fourth and fifth time this happened with the same results. The driver was laughing as the camera flashed while rolling past at a snail's pace.
Two weeks later, the driver got five tickets in the mail for driving without a seat belt.
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I might well imagine if the car was full of people not wearing seatbelts, each would get tickets.
MCFD has an agenda when they "investigate." They often don't tell you what "exactly" they are investigating, and may state only "a child protection concern" and state that privacy legislation may prevent them from telling you exactly what the allegations and dates are, as being too specific might identify the informant.
In the above example, it such camera's are usually for stop lights - but the driver has no clue for sure this is the infraction being watched out for, so he attempts to comply with what he thinks he should do as the camera is not labeled as to its purpose.
Similarly, MCFD will want to ease your suspicions, and may appear benign and appear interested in you, and appear to be just following up on an anonymous report "in order to comply with the law." The reality is they are fishing for repeatable occurrences of a parenting style they can tag as abusive, and later claim their many attendances to "educate" you as to the errors of your ways.
The question is should the camera have been labeled "seat-belt camera" so people are instantly reminded to put on their seat-belt so they avoid a fine? Not wearing a seat-belt is not a crime, it is a preventative mechanism for your protection to reduce accidents overall.
MCFD WANTS to collect the fine, so obviously they will not tell you what the issue is immediately and how to fix it immediately, which is supposed to be their mandate.
The OBJECTIVE and true actions of MCFD are to accumulate as much derogatory information as possible first, THEN, remove, THEN offer instruction as to avoiding repeating the infractions, and then maybe return your children.
Now, if MCFD simply exists as a mechanism to punish people, and this is supposed to serve as a deterrent to all other parents to know how incredibly horrible MCFD is, so they had better not "abuse" their child, it is not working.
Perhaps in the case of the Baynes, the matter being public, this public prosecution might very well be operating to warn parents not to go public and shake their baby.
Public fear of MCFD is a more reasonable resulting scenario to imagine than unaffected parents rising up in anger at MCFD en masse and demanding an inquiry.
iPhone apps exist that identify hot spots such as stop light cameras and radar traps for other drivers to be alerted of.
What is needed is something like a twitter setup that tweets every removal of children from a parent, naming the social worker, number of children and location (school, home daycare, or optionally, GPS location), and if criminal charges are applied, and if there was a warrant.
To Anon 9:55 AM
ReplyDeleteWholesale repeal or cancellation of CFCSA might be perceived as anti-child or anti-child protection. I am sure that we do not need to create that perception. Annulment of CFCSA is nothing I am proposing nor is it anything that will ever happen.
Your suggestion of annulling only the child removal component gets closer to what most readers of this blog have in mind. I suspect that a major re-construct must involve more than that, but you are correct that the reasons must be unequivocal and convincing. It is a huge challenge. You propose child welfare that temporarily services children but is not equipped with child removal authority.
Ray,
ReplyDeleteI'm going to quote what you said about incompetence/malice, though even given this quotation, and everything else you stated, you still seem, from what I can see, to suggest that it's incompetence, not malice, per se, that underlies MCFD acts:
"Incompetence breeds fear and people who are afraid can be malicious, vicious and all the other adjectives that were used.
That appalling display during the cross-examination of Zabeth Bayne was another manifestation of fear."
Finn Jensen was being malicious, not fearful or incompetent, in his attack upon Zabeth Bayne, a mother who has been deprived of her 3 children, a mother who is now pregnant and probably in fear of losing her 4th child, and a mother who has been tortured by MCFD. This kind of person - Finn Jensen - would be malicious no matter how brave or how fearful they felt in regard to their level of competence.
MCFD employees are not malicious because they are incompetent. They are malicious because that is their nature. And those who do such great harm to such defenceless and innocent parties deserve the least of our sympathy, especially when it is done in such a hypocritical fashion. MCFD employees who are malicious work for MCFD because they are malicious. MCFD is a haven for malicious people. There are few other places where you can be so malicious, get paid for it, and suffer no real consequences.
I know you worked for MCFD. But I am not accusing you of being malicious. I have no idea what MCFD was like when you worked there, which if I remember correctly, was a while ago. And maybe there are people who work at MCFD now who also are not malicious. But when you see someone attack a mother, who has already been so brutalized, in such a vicious fashion, I don't think it's accurate to say that the attack originates in feelings of incompetence. These people are what they are. Finn Jensen would perhaps be a competent lawyer wherever he practiced law. It's not incompetence or fear that made him attack Zabeth; it's maliciousness.
P.S. Thanks for upgrading me from a Quibbler to an "Arguer." I hope that means you are granting my comments a greater weight. I do think this is an important point, because it gets at something which is crucial to the whole issue of changing child protection: Accountability. Being incompetent has much less serious consequences than being malicious.
mal·ice
n.
1. A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.
2. Law: The intent, without just cause or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another.
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[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin malitia, from malus, bad)
malice [ˈmælɪs]
ReplyDeleten
1. the desire to do harm or mischief
2. evil intent
3. (Law) Law the state of mind with which an act is committed and from which the intent to do wrong may be inferred See also malice aforethought
[via Old French from Latin malitia, from malus evil]
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A moral value that has been lost in our society is respect for the parent. I think that it is valuable to change that. Every person should appreciate that their parents struggled to have them and had happiness in it. I think that there is way too much 'therapy culture' trying to dig out all kinds of negative attitudes about the family. I would like to see the family back as a strong part of our culture and parents must have more rights!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnon 9:20.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. A ton of money has been made, and is still being made, by demonizing parents. Everyone from Oprah to child protection agencies has capitalized on the notion that parents are destructive to their children. The boomer generation especially is attracted to this idea, perhaps because they don't like the idea of taking responsibility for their own lives, preferring instead to pass the buck to their parents, whom they have blamed everything from how fat they are to how unsuccessful they are.
Now more than ever perhaps, we do need to follow the commandment, and honour our father and mother.