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.