Liberals flip-flop on urgent need to rescue children
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - What can you do if your 14-year-old daughter skips school, starts using heroin and living in a cheap motel twice her age? What can you do if she refuses all help and takes off for downtown Vancouver?
Just about nothing, right now. And the Liberals have broken their commitment to change the law to allow children in imminent danger to be held for treatment, whether they like it or not.
It's not an abstract issue. Parents confront similar problems every day. And what they find is that under B.C. law no one can help them; a parent who drags a child home could be the one who ends up in court.
That's outrageous, that we can let a child choose to die through reckless and dangerous behaviour and do nothing.
The Liberal used to think so too. They repeatedly demanded the NDP enact a secure care law, one that would allow children at risk, perhaps working as prostitutes or living in crack houses, to be plucked from danger. The New Democrats dragged their feet, finally passing a poor law that they never implemented.
The Liberals were clear: secure care was urgently needed and should be a priority for the New Democrats.
Only one year before the election Gordon Campbell rose in the legislature and demanded the NDP act on a 1998 task force report outlining a sound plan for secure care.
"This is a problem that has been identified for years in this province," Campbell said them. "We know that there are countless families in the province of British Columbia who understand the urgency and the necessity for providing secure care for our children and youth in this province. Again my question to the minister is: what is the holdup? Why is the minister stalling on this matter, which has been so clearly identified as a matter of true risk to the children in the province?"
That was then. Now the Liberals are in power and what once was an urgent matter of life and death has become a low priority.
Childrens Minister Gordon Hogg says the government won't introduce a safe care bill this spring. The Liberals have too many bills to pass, and secure care won't be introduced before the 2003-4 sitting.
Even then, the bill will be much narrower in its focus than the legislation the Liberals supported in opposition.
The Liberals deserve credit for abandoning the NDP's effort. Any such legislation has to balance the rights of the child with the need for protection. The NDP bill, by allowing detention for up to 100 days, went too far.
But their failure to act is shameful.
Hogg offers some justifications, including the cold reality that even if children were plucked from danger, they couldn't get treatment. There's not enough space for seriously troubled youth voluntarily seeking treatment. "We don't have a lot of resources in place," Hogg said. "That's partly why I'm not uncomfortable with not getting on the legislative agenda."
That's not an explanation the Liberals accepted in opposition. Then, they argued the government had a duty to provide services for children at risk. The NDP expected about 10 children at a time would be held under the act - hardly an impossible burden.
Hogg also said the Liberal bill will narrow the focus of secure care to sexually exploited children.
That's not enough. The task force recommendations, accepted by the Liberals, stressed that the plan must include children at risk of serious harm from drug addiction or physical danger, not just sexual exploitation.
Hogg says parents of 13-year-old drug addicts should call the police, have them arrested and hope they'll get help through the courts.
But parents have tried that, and found the courts and over-burdened police are set up to deal with criminals, not lost children.
The Liberals are offering too little, too late.

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca