WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A GOODBYE

The government ministry commissioned with the responsibility of care for children erred gravely on this one. The MCFD didn't stumble or bungle it. MCFD planned this.  Here again is the way that I view this case. A small Métis toddler was ripped from a distraught Métis foster family and from her supportive Métis community and she was sent to Ontario to a non-Métis home, a wounding action that has left a bewildered, sorrowing and furious Métis community as well as a crowd of others, like me with systems sensitive to inequality and injustice.

Like I said yesterday, not all Métis have felt the anguish of uprooting a three-year old from the only parents she knows, living with them since she was three days old. The Métis in B.C. who were asked by the government for an opinion on this matter, are the Métis agencies that receive government funding, and they all approved the MCFD child-plucking.  Those service groups are the Métis Commission for Children and Families of BC, the Island Métis Children and Family Services Society and the Métis Nation of British Columbia.  Yes, I know. Make of it what you will. I know how that sits with me. Money talks, an old axiom remains exact.

The B.C. Métis Federation that supported the Métis foster family and their application to adopt the child, vigorously expressed to the Premier and to the Minister of Children, their opposition. The Foster parents did all that they could. They had one of the most committed and competent family lawyers in Jack Hittrich. They appealed to the Attorney General. The Press in telling the story expressed the obvious; the Ministry's plan was distasteful.

The Ministry did it anyway. Minds were made up. Due diligence be damned. I can imagine this worst-case scenario behind closed doors as MCFD colleagues converse.

"The Foster family can't continue to fight this in the courts if we quickly put her on a plane and send her off. The family has already dropped half a million dollars down the hole."

"We've got the majority of Métis in our pocket anyway."

"No one else is going to pay attention to this case in a few weeks."

"If there is any flak at all, we can promise that in the future we are going to give Indigenous people much more control over placements and adoptions."

"Yea, promise, promise, promise, that always works to diffuse present noise."

The princely side of me wants to believe that conversation has not transpired within the MCFD. It doesn't lessen or pardon the professional miscalculation. The lawful and the considerate choice was to permit that child not to experience the heart-wrenching experience of having her mommy and daddy disappear from her life without so much as a goodbye.

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If you will consider helping LM and RB as they go forward, look at these links,

Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com. 

B.C. MÉTIS FEDERATION are SS'S FRIENDS

The B.C. Métis organizations and agencies that approved the Ministry of Children and Families' plan to remove SS from a BC Métis foster family and put her in an Ontario non-Métis family, were all agencies that receive six-figure amounts of Liberal government funding are the Métis Commission for Children and Families of BC,  the Island Métis Children and Family Services Society and the Métis Nation of British Columbia.

It is not a frivolous observation that recipients of taxpayer monies approved the government plan. It would seem to have been a practical decision, a sensible choice if the 'best interest of the child' is not truly the top priority. Oh, I am not naïve. I am sure that the leadership of such groups can defend their decision and even believe it. It's a stretch but these groups may actually believe that it was best to place SS with her two sibling sisters in Ontario. To arrive at that opinion they needed to overlook or ignore the fact that to affect the child's transfer, the MCFD willingly violated inter-cultural understandings, lawful principles, regulations and policies that are well known and well documented.

You be the judge when I tell you that another principal aboriginal group with something to say about this child removal and transfer is the B.C. Métis Federation that has vigorously opposed the government plan since it was hatched. The B.C. Métis Federation receives no grants or monies from the Liberal government that directs the Ministry of Children, its directors and caseworkers.  Isn't that a noteworthy feature? Significantly this is the Métis community of which the Métis foster parents, RB and LM are members. BC Métis Federation communicated to the Liberal Premier Christy Clark and to the Minister of MCFD, Stephanie Cadieux, expressing its opposition.

These are the members of the Board of Directors of the B.C. Métis Federation. This is a robust and respectable aboriginal community led by effective leaders.

      Keith Henry, President (North Vancouver) 

      Rene Therrien, Vice-President (Terrace)

      Joe Desjarlais, Secretary (North Vancouver)

      Betty Fisher, Treasurer (Surrey)

      Ken Fisher, Director (Vancouver)

      Baillie Redfern, Director (Vancouver)

JJ Lavallee, Director (Surrey)

Joe Desjarlais has written a remarkably insightful, scathing article entitled "#BringSShome", the entirety of which is found on the Federation's instructive website. Here is one paragraph.

"A helpless child torn from the only family she knows breaks down to rubble the myth of a benevolent government looking out for the best interests of Métis peoples, and in full view of all Canadians who care to listen. As the well-being and freedom of a little child comes into focus, the deep exclusion, injustice, oppression and hypocrisy of the colonial myth is laid bare. The tragedy is that Métis communities/nations are, in the historic and contemporary sense, dynamic peoples with valid autonomous histories and cultures of their own. Had governments, agencies, and courts respected our historical difference, a different outcome could have been realized for SS, one that illustrated well that Métis nations can contribute to Canada as ongoing ‘partners’."

If you will consider helping LM and RB as they go forward, look at these links,

Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com. 

DARK SIDE OF MÉTIS PARTNERSHIP WITH LIBERAL GOVERNMENT

DARK SIDE OF MÉTIS PARTNERSHIP WITH LIBERAL GOVERNMENT

Métis Commission for Children and Families

Métis organizations and agencies that receive six-figure amounts of Liberal government funding are the Métis Commisssion for Children and Families of BC,  the Island Métis Children and Family Services Society and the Métis Nation of British Columbia. Each of these has a network of service provider agency arms for the Métis people across this province. That's the bright side, the wisdom side of the relationship these aboriginal organizations have with the B.C. government and specifically with the Ministry of Children and Families. MCFD can rely upon these agencies to assist Métis people with services that money can provide.

There is also a dark side, the foolish side of this relationship and we have seen it expressed in the case of three-year-old SS who lost her family, her foster mom and dad and four foster siblings and her Métis connections within the past two months. Instead of 'foster' I might have written the word 'real.' This family is the only family she has known since she was born. Her Métis birth parents wanted her to be with this foster family. How did the dark side of the aforementioned Métis organizations manifest itself? In my opinion, in an unmistakable demonstration of who butters their bread, these organizations supported the Ministry of Children and Families' plan to remove SS from her Métis family. Not so the BC Métis Federation to which her foster family belongs and who have been opposed to moving the child to Ontario.

You see this was ostensibly a 'best interests of the child' question, yet it can also be interpreted in this instance to be a 'best interests of us' decision when it comes to spouting one thing in principle but in practice doing something contradictory. Observe the Métis Commission for Children and Families of BC self expression, "Acting as the legislatively designated community, the Commission is fostering the development of Métis culturally inclusive and specific programs and services through the various agencies across the province. We desire to better serve the Métis community in all facets of program and service delivery and to protect and serve the legacy of Métis people by addressing systemic issues.  We are all working for and towards the safety of our children, as well as the resurgence and perpetuation of Métis Culture through inclusive and culturally relevant programs and services. We are all brothers and sisters in the extended community of Métis people."

(Above quotation at this website page)

I highlighted key phrases for you the reader to evaluate whether in supporting the MCFD plan for SS, the Commission protected and served the legacy of Métis people, or helped to perpetuate Métis culture? You cannot successfully argue to me that the best interests of this child were served by removing her from intelligent professional foster parents who wanted to adopt her and were already her Aboriginal Custom Adoptive parents, from a Métis family and culture and community, contravening legislation that prohibits her adoption out of province or to a non-Métis family, and then covering bureaucratic butt by changing the move from adoption to a fostering relationship in Ontario.

If you will consider helping LM and RB as they go forward, look at these links,

Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com. 

MCFD OPINION ABOUT ABORIGINAL ADOPTION? MERE WORDS, WRITTEN BUT IGNORED

I am going to tell you how MCFD disregards its own policies to the injury of a three-year-old child. I will inform you that MCFD has successfully exempted itself from following the law.

Right here on the B.C. government's own website is the page that speaks about adoption of aboriginal children. The lead paragraph states, "Aboriginal children in care need homes with Aboriginal families whenever possible – to help them stay connected with their extended family and community."

That social interest feature is precisely what took place three years ago when LM and RB were asked to take SS into their home when she was a newly born three day old baby girl of Métis biological parentage. LM is Métis and she and RB, her husband, are members of the BC Métis Federation. 

Then the B.C. Website speaks about an Aboriginal Custom Adoption with these value features, such as custom adoption "makes it possible for Aboriginal families, organizations and communities to use a culturally appropriate way of planning for Aboriginal children." Not only that, but the government explanation also states such a Custom Adoption "respects the customs and traditions of the First Nations and/or Aboriginal community of the child," and "ensures Aboriginal children maintain their cultural, linguistic and spiritual identity." Of course, and that too is precisely what LM and RB did when SS's biological parents asked them to be the child's adoptive parents (Custom adoption). Done.

To persons who are now deemed adoptive parents by virtue of the Custom Aboriginal Adoption provision, the government advises them to get a lawyer to help them with an application to have their Custom adoption recognized by the Supreme Court. Taking that advice LM and RB made application for a formally recognized adoption. All is well one would think. The government should be pleased with the progress of this case that is clearly in the best interest of the child.  Not so.  Because the government had a different plan for SS.

MCFD social workers, several months into the fostering program expressed a plan to adopt the child out of province to a non-Métis, non-aboriginal couple in Ontario. Well, guess what! That is not supposed to happen. But it did. It happened to SS's two older sisters years earlier in Ontario.  The Ontario Children's Aid Society placed the two Métis girls in a non- Métis home. The birth parents eventually moved to B.C. where SS was born three years ago.  The Children's Aid in Ontario and the MCFD of BC struck an arrangement, colluded, to have the little girl known as SS join the two sisters in Ontario.  It is unlawful to send an aboriginal child outside the province of B.C. Has anyone spoken publicly about that? Have any news sources picked up on that? Well certainly the BC Métis Federation spoke against this injustice. Yet what about the other Métis organizations and agencies including the Métis Commission for Children and Families of BC, the Island Métis Children and Family Services Society and the Métis Nation British Columbia? What did each of these three do? They supported the MCFD plan. Why? There is a story there. Can you smell it? I will get to that in a day or two. And why don't judges flag injustice that is as flagrant as this?

BY ALL MEANS look up the little girl's Facebook page ‘Bring Home Baby S’, and the two websites that tell her story, bringsshome.ca or bringsshome.com.