November 15, 2005

Solicitor Stalls on the Coroner's Requirements

The BC Legislature was in recess last week because of Remembrance Day. That's the week when BC's Chief Coroner, Terry Smith, decided to talk to the media. Paul Willcocks wrote: "Part way through the call from Chief Coroner Terry Smith, I got the feeling I'd been scammed for the last several years." Smith admitted that his office doesn't have the legislative authority it needs to pick up the work from the former Children's Commission, and it is at least $1 million a year short of having sufficient budget.

To no one's surprise, with the possible exception of Solicitor General John Les, the Opposition canvassed Smith's disclosure in question period on November 14th. The NDP's Adrian Dix focused on Les with a question about the dozens of cases that were closed when the Campbell government eliminated the Children's Commission; he asked what the Solicitor General was "going to do to see that these files are recovered and the public learns what happened to these forgotten children?" Les answered the first question as he did several that followed by saying that "no child death goes unreviewed in British Columbia. We have ensured throughout that every child's death is reviewed through the coroner's office, as in fact has occurred for years here in British Columbia." The Solicitor General was playing very tricky, some might say deceptive, games with his choice of words. The traditional review of a death by a coroner is very narrow; it does not capture the scope of the reviews of the former Children's Commission, which is why even the Campbell government agreed that the Chief Coroner needed to adopt a new expanded review process for children. In the words of the Child and Youth Officer, Jane Morley, who recommended the expanded role and has staunchly defended it, in an article she wrote for the Times Colonist, July 26, 2005, "Terry Smith is committed to a similar multi-disciplinary, inclusive process to review Sherry Charlie's death. The design of a responsive process awaits the completion of the local coroner's investigation." In other words, the standard local coroner's investigation is inadequate, and an expanded process is necessary to replace the work of the Children's Commission.

The Opposition is now asking why it took the government over three years since it abolished the Children's Commission to discover that the chief coroner lacks the necessary legislation and budget to do the job. As a public servant, Smith cannot reveal whether he advised the government of the need for legislative changes and spending authority before the shortfalls became evident to the public, but Jane Morley who has repeatedly claimed that she is as independent as the officers she replaced, might have thought about the inadequacies. The public deserves to know when the government was warned about the budget and legislative problems, why it didn't have a transition plan, and whether the deaths of children whose files were simply closed will go forever uninvestigated.