Children are NOT a Priority of this Government

Despite the protestations of Children & Family Minister Tom Christensen, it is clear that the Monumental Premier does not keep short people clearly in his sights.

No, he is busy with roads and bridges and ski runs and business-destroying transit lines.

Judge Thomas Gove made large and small and all-significant recommendations in his 1995 report.

Judge Ted Hughes did the same in 2006.

Both came to their similar conclusions after substantial expense of public monies; expenditures which would be welcomed if anyone bothered to listen or follow-up with that word so foreign to governments - "ACTION."

Now, May Ellen Turpel-Lafond. the province's new watchdog for children and youth, has issued an almost identical report calling for a new kind of attentiveness.

Of course, The Minister, who should have resigned last year when yet another child "in care" died, has said, "We welcome the report. It is consistent with the direction we are going in."

The Tom Christensens and Gordon Campbells of the world just never quite get it, do they?

Christensen rolls out all the numbers and dollars they are spending to improve matters. New bodies, new "systems."

But it's not about more money, more workers, more computer programs.

It's about getting the people on the front lines really, sharply tuned to the subtleties of working with families and children at risk.

What are the real issues? The real indicators of trouble? The real signposts of safety? Whom can be trusted? Whom cannot? When is the right time and where is the right place for intervention? Families or fosters?

Every situation is new, yet every situation holds some echo of the one before it.

This government continues to ignore children at risk. And when, in embarrassment and desperation in finally turns to the matter it hand, it inevitable responds with what it knows - throw more green at the problem, buy it off.

Maybe that works for ferry boats and lumber mills, but it doesn't work for the suffering child.