Everyone lost when child death reviews were just shut down

VICTORIA - Part way through the call from Chief Coroner Terry Smith, I got the feeling I'd been scammed for the last several years.
All along the government has claimed that nothing has really been lost with the elimination of the Children's Commission, and its reviews of child deaths. The coroner has stepped in to do those investigations, said everyone from Gordon Campbell on down.
It always seemed rubbish. The Children's Commission was reviewing more than 150 deaths a year, producing regular public reports on what had happened, and what broader lessons could be learned. (That was only a small part of its work.)
In the three years since the Liberals eliminated the commission, the coroner has produced a report on just one death, and one other general report. The child officer is now starting her first report on a death. Public reporting effectively stopped in 2003.
But through it all the government kept saying the coroner was on the job, even if there were no reports. Child death reviews were being done.
Then came the phone interview with Smith, who announced an inquest into the death of Sherry Charlie. Sherry, 19 months old, was beaten to death after being placed in the care of relatives by a First Nations agency acting on behalf of the ministry.
Smith says he is confident that every child death has been adequately reviewed by ther coroner's office. Children haven't fallen through the cracks, he says.
But he also confirmed that full child death reviews were halted at the beginning of 2003, and have not been done since then.
For starters, the coroner's office doesn't have the legal power to do the reviews. It can't demand documents, or hold in-camera hearings. Smith says he is hoping for legislative changes next spring - more than three years after the Children's Commission was axed - to allow the reviews.
And the coroner doesn't have the money. The Children's Commission had a $4.2-million budget, with something like $1.5 million allocated for child death reviews. The coroner's office was coping with big budget cuts when it took on child death reviews. It got $200,000 to fund the new responsibility, a small fraction of the former commitment.
No one could argue that was enough.
Smith agrees. He's asked for an extra $1 million a year to fund proper child death reviews
"We're now at a point where we need to start doing the fuller reviews, and I have asked for additional resources along with some legislative changes to accommodate that," he said.
But for the last three years, the government has been maintaining that those "fuller reviews" were being done.
The truth is that the Children's Commission was eliminated with no real plan to ensure that work continued, or that there was any effective independent oversight on behalf of the public. The commission doors were closed Jan. 1, 2003. Reviews in progress were quickly shut down. The commission's database on child deaths was abandoned. Everything started from scratch.
As a reporter, and a parent, and a fretful citizen worried about the kids who end up in government care, I found the Children's Commission extremely valuable. When a commission audit found half the children in government care didn't have up-to-date plans for their care, I thought that was valuable. The death reviews, while sad reading, offered useful lessons.
But I accept that there's an argument that the commission went too far in reviewing every death, or that there were too many overlapping investigations. The government could have come up with a thoughtful alternative.
Instead, it killed the Children's Commission and Child and Family Advocate without ensuring any effective replacement. The advocacy work being done, the reviews to identify the ministry's problems - and successes - were all halted.
Children in care, families dependent on the ministry and people who think that accountability is important have all lost as a result.
Footnote: Smith's announcement means there are now eight inquiries linked to Sherry's death. New Democrat Adrian Dix, who has been extremely effective, wants one public inquiry. But at this point, the best option is to let the reviews produce results rather than stepping into the legal complexities and potential delays of a public inquiry.