HON. STEPHANIE CADIEUX and THE POISONED PORTFOLIO

*BY guest writer RAY FERRIS

Hon. Stephanie Cadieux

Being the minister for children and families has always been a poisoned portfolio, which has despoiled the budding careers of various politicians. Ministers have virtually no powers, yet they have to take all the heat for a chronically incompetent senior administration of career bureaucrats. The periodic child welfare scandals that erupt cause frantic wriggling and writhing, but no effective change.

Judge Hughes

How naive Judge Hughes was when he said that they needed to halt the turnover of Ministers and Deputy Ministers to provide stability and leadership.

Court Hearing Postponed / Part 440 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

In a follow-up comment on my same blog post of a couple of days ago, confidant, advisor and advocate to the Baynes, Ray Ferris provided an update to the scheduled court hearing regarding Josiah. Please don't misunderstand but catch Ray's sardonic turns of phrase.

Ray Ferris said... "OOPS! OOPS! OOPS! TRIPLE OOPS!

HERE IS THE VERY LATEST ON THE BAYNE CASE'

"When the MCFD rushed in to snatch the Bayne baby on Feb 10th, they locked themselves into having to go to court and file presentation papers within one week. The case was set down for hearing this morning in the Surrey court. Conspicuous by his absence was the worker who swore the affidavit. This means that he could not be questioned on it.When the Baynes got to court they found that the director had already arranged to have the matter adjourned to Feb 24. The judge refused to let the Baynes speak, so once more the system is stacked against them. The judge did say that she recommended the case should be heard by Judge Crabtree, so someone is listening to me. Now I will tell you what is really happening here. The answer is simple DAMAGE CONTROL.

You see it goes something like this. When director Bruce McNeill spent months and years trying to decide whether to follow his lawyer's advice to return the Bayne kids, he painted himself into a corner. If he backed out after all that time he would look bad. No matter because the Baynes had no more money for lawyers and would be defenceless. Then that darned Doug Christie ruined all the plans and people were saying unkind things on the Ron Unruh blog. People are so heartless you know. Then that wretched Bayne woman makes life even more complicated by getting pregnant again in the middle of the trial. Not only that it was a planned pregnancy! How could she do that to him? In defence of Mrs.Bayne, she feels that she has a lot of mother love to give and she always wanted another child. Nobody could believe that the trial would go past September and she would be delivered long after it was over.

Anyway, this left poor Bruce McNeill with a terrible dilemma.How could he possibly rant on for three years that the Baynes were totally unfit parents and then ignore this new child. He must show stern resolve and remove it at birth. If he did not, he would look weak and nobody would respect him. However, he is of course a man of profound compassion and he sought a way out for himself and the baby. If the parents would would work diligently and sincerely with his staff and allow them to help her with her pregnancy, then they might be able to agree on a parenting plan which would avoid apprehension and also demonstrate his benevolence. This might have worked fine if that dreadful man Ray Ferris had not interfered and Ron Unruh had not backed him up. He actually told Mrs. Bayne to have no contact with him (the Director) or his staff because it would put too much stress on her during her pregnancy. What a terrible thing to say and that wounded him deeply. What choice did that leave the poor fellow but to apprehend at birth?

So he summoned his trusty obedient servant Mr. Darth Humeny and said "Go to that hospital, grab the Bayne baby and do not come home without him." So Humeny jumped onto his black stallion, and galloped off to the Royal Columbian Hospital. He stormed into the nursery, spurs jingling and loudly announced that he was apprehending the Bayne child and that from now on he was Josiah's daddy."
February 17, 2011 4:14 PM

"He paused only to drop by Zabeth's room and tell her what he had done.He asked her to understand that he was only obeying orders. Oddly enough, Zabeth was not in the mood for a chat.

He next went back to the nursing station and asked how soon he could come in with a foster mother to pick up the baby. It was only then that he found out that Josiah would take at least a couple of weeks to gain the necessary weight. OOPS! DARN. If only he had thought to ask on the way in. He could have phoned the boss for instructions, but now he had announced that Josiah was in care and he could not back out. The best that he and the boss could come up with was to try to see how they could restrict access to the Baynes in the special care nursery. Obviously the best thing for Josiah was mother's milk and the medical staff favoured breast feeding. Because he was so small Baby Bayne had to drink expressed milk for a few days. Bingo!

They put a ban on expressed milk. These dangerous parents would probably poison the bottle.

They seemed to be back in control, but all hell broke loose. Facebook news travels fast. Soon the Rep for children and youth was being swamped with letters. Members of the legislature were getting an earful and so was the minister and the deputy minister. I was writing to everyone pointing out that there had been no less disruptive plan explored as requred by law. The child would be perfectly safe until Judge Crabtree ruled at the end of the month and the parents had unrestricted access to their baby and he was bonding with his mum.

Humeny that he could salvage the situation, by simply withdrawing his complaint and making up the sort of feeble excuse that they do so well.

So this morning's court was an exercise in damage control. Everybody was saying to the director that he should get out of this before he did any more damage. Of course Bruce could not risk losing face by withdrawing the complaint, so he dashed off to his trusty lawyer, pleading for rescue. The lawyer did what all lawyers do when they are in a jam. You ask for an adjournment. So they got an adjournment with no change in the status quo. No interim custody order of any sort. Legal limbo. Judge Crabtree has given himself until the end of February to announce his ruling. There are only two more working days left after the scheduled court date, so it is virtually certain that the ruling will be out by then and all will be resolved. If the ruling is against the ministry there will be a media storm and this last piece of stupidity will be buried in the waves.

If only McNeill had listened to me in mid December when I urged him to be cautious and not to move before Judge Crabtree's ruling. If only Leslie Dutoit had followed my request to her to urge prudence on her director. As the due date drew nearer, I urged them again to be prudent. This reckless action gained them nothing and only added more difficulties for the Bayne parents When the Baynes are so distressed, all their supporters are also distressed."

February 17, 2011 4:19 PM 

PROUD MARY KEEPS ON BURNING/ Part 378 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

PROUD MARY KEEPS ON BURNING
Mary Polak has been treated fairly on my blog. I report what is to be reported. I have not taken unkind shots at her. Perhaps I am like one hundred other journalists who are politically polite. Not so Alex G. Tsakumis, an insider, politically savvy writer, whose blog is easily the most straight-shooting prose you will find in cyberspace. So if you want another good way to fill five minutes of every day, check out his Rebel with a Cause site.

Some days ago, when Bill Bennet was getting axed by his Liberal Caucus amigos, Alex wrote a post. Mary Polak had been tiptoeing to explain the Cultus Lake incident in which for nine days a disabled girl was stuck with her dead mother's body. Straight-shooting means that sometimes the target gets wounded or dead. Tsakumis' target was proud Mary and the article was entitled, 'Bill Bennett Booted but Mary Polak Rewarded?! Democracy in B.C. Politics–Non-Existent.'.

I have pasted the article in its entirety here because I am very concerned about the governance of our province, and particularly now as it relates to the welfare of children and their families.

“Think about this. On all the news programs and in the papers this morning, and for the last week, we are consumed with the story of a 14 year-old Down syndrome girl, who for nine days, soaked in her own urine and excrement, was trying to nurse back to life her mother’s rotting corpse.

But this is apparently of no interest to presumptive Premier Kevin Falcon, or contender Rich Coleman, or dreamer George Abbott and the deeply delusional, ‘Basi-Virk’ excuse pinch-hitter Mike DeJong. NOT ONE of them stood up in Cabinet today and demanded Children and Families Minister Mary Polak be immediately fired.

Why should Proud Mary, Gordon Campbell’s chief loyalist in caucus be fired?

Read on.

After the young girl’s two courageous brothers begged the Ministry of Children and Families to intervene two months ago and extract the girl from her alcoholic and drug addicted mother, the Ministry, in turn, left the child in a definitively at-risk position, where if she had not been discovered when she was, within two days, she too would have perished.

In subsequent interviews, Minister Polak, in what I can charitably describe as a woman suffering from the most severe case of PMS in the history of the menstrual cycle, mouth frothing with indignation, high-gloss manicured claws growing, proceeded to provide the most disgusting display of media deflection and excuse-peddling I’ve seen in years–angry, defiant and nasty. Sound familiar?

But Polak’s Campbell-fueled fib factory is rewarded with the crown for winning ‘Survivor of the Dimmest’. Not a single Cabinet member went after her for such a despicable display. Not one of them cares about the fact that Judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, MCFD watchdog, has written a letter to the Minister complaining that the incident with the Prentice family was not only NOT reported to her, but never even booked by the Ministry.

That was a week ago.

No response from Deputy Minister Lesley DuToit (a hand-picked Campbellite) or Minister Polak herself whose is content to gloriously writhe under the cover of the Campbell tartan.

She doesn’t care. She fabricates conditions upon which this near double tragedy unfurled. She takes a position most offside of an honest word.

And yet Bill Bennett is jettisoned by his Cabinet colleagues for telling the truth. Mind, if Bennett felt the throne was occupied by the wrong royal, what was he doing sitting at the round table for as long as he did?

Only in Gordon Campbell’s universe do you survive for being a rube or a charlatan. If you tell the truth, they rip the phone from your hands and send a disgraced Cabinet member to display your head on a stick.

While Mary sits, laughing…”

Clearly Alex doesn't want to sit with her to fix things. He merely thinks she and others deserve to be gone.
Post title suggested by the song Proud Mary, written by John Fogerty and made famous by Credence Clearwater Revival and by Tina Turner, and the Post theme derived from Mary Polak, Minister of Children, B.C.

TURPEL-LAFOND: ESTEEMED BURR UNDER THE SADDLE / Part 298 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

She is a bit of a burr under the saddle of the MCFD. It doesn't need to be that way. MCFD could regard her as an advantage. Her work has potential to make MCFD better.

In November 2006, Dr. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond was appointed British Columbia's first Representative for Children and Youth. It is a five-year term and her responsibilities include; advocating for children and youth, protecting their rights and improving the system for their protection and support, particularly those who are most vulnerable. She serves all British Columbians under the age of 19, with an emphasis on young people in government care – such as those in foster homes, group homes or youth custody. These children and youth face greater challenges than those in the general population, especially related to health and education, incarceration and dependence on income assistance.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, S.J.D. (born 1963 in Norway House, Manitoba) the youngest of four girls born to a Cree father and Scottish mother on a reserve in northern Manitoba. She is a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. She grew up in poverty, endured harsh physical mistreatment, and was surrounded by domestic violence and alcoholism in her home—a mirror of the upbringing experienced by many of the children she now encounters.

She is a Canadian lawyer and advocate for children's rights, and a judge on leave of the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan. At age 35 Turpel-Lafond was the first Treaty Indian to be named to the bench in Saskatchewan. She was the Administrative Judge for Saskatoon, involved in the administration of the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan in relation to access to justice, judicial independence projects, technology and public outreach. She has also worked as a criminal law judge in youth and adult courts, which led her to work at developing partnerships to better serve the needs of young people in the justice system, particularly sexually exploited children and youth, and children and youth with disabilities, such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

As a practicing lawyer, she appeared before all levels of Courts in Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Turpel-Lafond has worked on land claims with the Indian Law Resource Center in Washington, D.C., and served as a key legal and constitutional adviser to aboriginal leaders. She has been touted for a seat on the Supreme Court of Canada.

By age 16, she was already at Carleton University, Ottawa, gravitating from math and science to politics, philosophy and eventually the law. Turpel-Lafond holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University, a law degree from Osgoode Hall, a master’s degree in international law from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate of law from Harvard Law School. She also holds a certificate in the international and comparative law of human rights from the University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France.
Time magazine has twice bestowed honours upon Turpel-Lafond, naming her one of the '100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow' in 1994, and in 1999 as one of the 'Top 20 Canadian Leaders for the 21st Century'.
Prior to her judicial appointment, Turpel-Lafond was a lawyer in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan and a tenured professor of law at Dalhousie University Faculty of Law. She taught law at the University of Toronto, the University of Notre Dame and other universities, and held the position of Aboriginal Scholar at the University of Saskatchewan. She has been a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria law schools.

As the Representative, she doesn’t work for the government. Rather, the Representative for Children and Youth is an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and does not report through a provincial ministry. Their work is based on the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, and upholds the following values:
– Children have a right to be protected and kept safe
– Families are the best environment for raising a child
– Parents and extended family have the primary responsibility for a child
– Decisions made about a child should include their own views and input

Bio Information from her website
and from Wikipedia

Paul and Zabeth Bayne – Part Eleven – The Alarming Case of B.C. Government's Miscarriage of Justice

I understand that readers may not want to read my sympathetic treatment of the Bayne dilemma without knowing what the Ministry of Children and Family Development has in the Bayne Case File which MCFD is forbidden to make public ostensibly to protect the children. Zabeth and Paul Bayne however are under no such restriction and having gained those MCFD files they have submitted them to the media. Both Kathy Tomlinson from CBC ‘Go Public’ and Robert Freeman of the Chilliwack Progress have seen copies of those files.

Some readers may surmise that although the parents have stated that one of their small sons fell on the baby, we really don’t know what happened to baby Bethany back in September 2007. I answer that with Zabeth’s own testimony that she knows what happened and she has told us that she watched her second child Baden turn a corner running, then stumbling and falling on Bethany. This accident scenario was reported and recorded in all medical records at various hospitals and clinics over three weeks following the accident. A later CT scan of Bethany’s head confirmed internal bruising precisely at the spot on her head which Zabeth had identified as the area of contact between brother and sister. The attendant physician verified that this bruise was consistent with a contusion at that head location. That evidence is in hand and public.

I have earlier stated that Paul and Zabeth Bayne have been given no hearing and that statement has been challenged as inaccurate by someone who knows that BC law requires that when a child is removed from parents, social workers must appear before a judge within 10-12 days to explain why and justify the removal decision. Parents are permitted in the court together with a lawyer of choice or a legal aid lawyer and the assigned Judge determines whether the child or children will remain in Ministry care or be returned to the parents. This is what should ideally occur. In point of fact, after the children were removed on October 22, 2007, a presentation hearing did occur in December 2007 at which their lawyer was present. That is the only court hearing there has been. On that occasion, the MCFD which is required prior to the court date, to provide to parents a written copy of what MCFD intends to present, failed to do so, handing the affidavit to the birth parents as they entered the court, affording them and their legal counsel no time to process it. Moreover, the Baynes were not allowed to present any evidentiary information themselves. On that occasion the judge issued an ‘Interim Order’ because he wanted to first learn the outcome of the police investigation which as it turns out resulted in RCMP dropping all potential charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The aforementioned ‘Interim Order’ is what the title implies, a three month interim arrangement after which if the MCFD deems it necessary it can petition the judge for an extension of the ‘Interim Order’ or for a ‘Temporary Order.’ This formal request of which Baynes should certainly have been apprised has never happened although they have been told that MCFD is acting under a ‘Temporary Order.’ The Case files to which Baynes are entitled contain only the ‘Interim Order’ and perhaps more disturbing is the conflicting interaction between Baynes and MCFD representatives who have stated that MCFD is leaping from ‘Interim Order’ to ‘Continuing Order’ by which the children may be adopted out. If there is another order, the parents of these children have never been told. Here is the kicker. The inviolate law is that children under five years of age may not remain in the care of MCFD jurisdiction for a period over twelve months. This law is designed to limit the damage sustained by a child by removal from parents.

Someone has suggested to me that because the Ministry has had the care of the children since 2007 that this is indication it possesses sufficient evidence to convince a judge that the child should remain in care. The truth is MCFD has not been before a judge since December 2007 in order to present such convincing data. At that first presentation hearing MCFD stated it had no concerns and no evidence was presented. In the many months that have followed, MCFD’s own lawyer is on record as having told the Ministry that the Director does not have a compelling case and should at the very least return the boys to the parents. A quotation from a letter written by a community manager to the MCFD lawyer states, "Dr. Korn's medical report of November 2007 completed shortly after the two older children came into care indicates that there was no evidence of harm or injury to the children"… "At this point it is your belief that the Director should consider a return of the two older children to the parents."

Please consider writing a gracious letter to two important people who can make a difference. Forget writing anything inflammatory. A passionate civil letter of appeal is what I am asking.
1) Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Children and Family Development
LESLEY DU TOIT
PO BOX 9721 STN PROV GOVT
VICTORIA BC V8W 9S2
E-mail: MCF.DeputyMinistersOffice@gov.bc.ca

2) Minister of Children and Family Development and Minister Responsible for Child Care.
HONOURABLE MARY POLAK
PO BOX 9057 STN PROV GOVT
VICTORIA BC V8W 9E2
Email: mary.polak.mla@leg.bc.ca