February 25, 2009

Inadequate Child Protection: Again!

It would be unfair to accuse Children and Family Development Minister Tom Christensen of misleading the Legislature, when the alternative exists that he may not know what he is talking about.

On April 16, 2008, Christensen told the Legislature: "The budget for the Ministry of Children and Family Development today is 30 percent higher than it was in 2000-2001." This year, on February 24, 2009, Christensen twice told the Legislature during question period: "The Ministry of Children and Family Development's budget this year will increase a further $14 million. That builds on an over $400-million increase since the NDP was in government, a 40-percent increase in the ministry's funding to serve vulnerable children." He was wrong in 2008 and he is even more inaccurate in 2009.

In 2000-2001, the NDP budget for the Ministry of Children and Families (as restated in the first set of estimates presented to the Legislature by Gary Collins) was $1.501 billion. For 2009-2010, the budget for the Ministry of Children and Family Development is $1.402 billion. That looks like a cut of $100 million, but , it is apples and oranges to compare those numbers because the Ministry has gone through many (too many ) reorganizations in 9 years. In 2000 it did not include responsibility for day care; that was part of welfare, later shifted to women's services and finally to its current home. Likewise, responsibility for Community Living BC was once part of the ministry but was shifted to Housing and Social Development (along with gambling and booze).

While it is virtually impossible to reconstruct comparable annual budgets for the ministry to cover the last 10 years, anyone who has read the Hughes Report or any of the other documents that followed Campbell's 2002 slashing of public services knows that the Ministry of Children and Family Development was put into crisis. NDP Leader Carole James today released an internal Ministry report, titled Child in Care, Cost-Driver Analysis, which says: "Overall costs of children and care expenditures are increasing at rates beyond inflation and beyond the ministry's capacity to continue to fund within existing budgets." Christensen refused to say whether he had read the report and whether his ministry has made it available to the Representative for Children and Youth.

No one needs leaked reports to see that the government is misleading the public over cuts to child protection services. All that is necessary is to turn to the Service Plan the Ministry tabled with the budget on February 17th. It gives a breakdown of full-time-equivalent staff (FTEs) by function within the ministry, showing that FTEs for child and family development (which includes child protection) are set to decrease from 3,350 in the year ending March 31, 2009 to 3,238 in the year beginning April 1st, and to 3,165 in 2011-2012.

The government might be surprised to learn that during a recession the need for child protection services increases. It might also be surprised to learn that the public expects to have open and honest government.