Ray Ferris, my writing colleague for GPS
(Advocacy Blog) has written another article to the Times Colonist. He himself
had a helpful and rewarding career in the Ministry of Children and Family
Development dealing justly for children and parents and caregivers. Later as he
saw bureaucratic missteps and bungling he became an outspoken critic as well as
an advisor.
Look at his latest piece.
MCFD's
DEFAULT LEAP TO LITIGATION
The
Clarke government always seems to be willing to spend more on battling its
citizens than on helping them. They leap to litigation with no apparent heed
for the cost. We know about the big ones like the years taken to lose a dispute
with the teachers, the millions covering up the fired health researchers and
the six million spent bailing out Basi and Verk. We will never be allowed to
know the true cost of all those millions spent battling against families and
innocent children in family court.
Suffice it to say that if a family
has its children removed under the CF&CSA, they will need at least $200,000
in legal fees to get them back, regardless of the merits f the case. Several
cases have cost far more. Parents need deep pockets, a valuable house or a very
generous lawyer. The late Doug Christie worked free for the B. case for two years.
Hittrich law advanced well over a million. The director was willing to fight
for a year in a losing cause and the case still goes on. A Victoria lawyer gave
$700,000 worth of service in a case, where the judge had already returned the
children under supervision. The director wasted a full week of Hittrichcourt time just
quibbling about details of a continued order. What did that cost the taxpayer?
Then there was the little Metis child
SS. She was snatched from her Metis foster home over the pleadings of Ms.
Turpel-Lafond and sent to strangers. The loving foster parents and extended
family spent nearly a million dollars trying to keep her. How much did the
taxpayer spend? Now their Metis adoption of her has been legally validated, the
director spends more millions battling them and the child in the courts of the
North-West-Territories. Sad.
From Ray Ferris. # 105-3900 Shelbourne St.,
Victoria V8P 4H8, 250 477 5723
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