SYNOPSIS: BC’s MINISTRY OF CHILDREN, PERSONNEL & PRACTICE

By Ron Unruh

In a nutshell, we have a Ministry of Children and Family Development that contains a department called child protection. Our Law Enforcement is not local policing but rather the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Our judicial system is commendable but besieged by too many cases and not enough judges and not enough available court time. We have lawyers, oh oh ...do we have lawyers, and many of them have tapped into the lucrative contracts with MCFD. Their interest therefore is not expediency, and they do not give a second thought to extended delays in process and what that may mean to a family in terms of heartache, relational distress or financial crippling. RCMP and MCFD have a working arrangement in child protection cases that when an apprehension must be made, officers will accompany social workers, making the situation so much more intimidating and traumatic.