The Childrens' Commission, which had the responsibility and authority to investigate deaths of children, ceased to exist in September 2002. Under the guise of efficiency, the Campbell government eliminated the independent officers who were capable of blowing the whistle on the consequences of its budget slashing in the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The coroner is the only office with the authority to conduct investigations into the deaths of children without an explicit request from the Attorney General. When he was in opposition, Gordon Campbell said that an investigation by the coroner in the death of a child was not adequate. His government now contends that it is adequate with an expanded mandate.

In an article that appeared in the March 21, 2005, Times Colonist and Vancouver Sun, reporter Lindsay Kines wrote about his interview with Chief Coroner Terry Smith and said that his office "is in the midst of a sweeping child-death review that could become a model for future cases". According to Kines, Smith sees the current investigation, on which he'll comment in late April (two weeks before the election), as "a test run for a new process the coroners' service hopes to use on five or six major cases each year." That means that it has been two and a half years since an adequate investigation has been done into the death of a child. The coroner's office may claim that many of the deaths of children were reviewed by local coroners but the fact that it is about to announce a new more comprehensive model means that an inferior model has been used since it became the only agency responsible for reviewing the deaths of children. For most of the Campbell government's term of office, there has been no independent watchdog looking at whether $200 million in cuts to the Ministry of Children and Family Development, including the closure of three youth detention facilities and the layoff of line level child protection workers, contributed to the deaths of any children. During that time approximately 940 young people died in BC, 24 or more of whom were children in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The Ministry doesn't release data on the number of deaths of children known to it but not formally in its care. With the coroner only now gearing up to fill the gap left by the firing of the Children's Commission, the public will never know what the government hid during its period of devastating cuts to service. When the Chief Coroner releases more information in late April, perhaps he can comment on the two and a half year gap in investigations and on his choice of timing. The coroner's service always emphasizes that it does not engage in fault finding; let's hope that it also does not engage in butt covering for the Campbell government.