Access to government information on children being curbed, says P.E.I. child advocate

A rewrite of P.E.I.'s child protection legislation will end up making it harder to access records to review how government services affect children, says the province's child and youth advocate.

That's a key component of Marvin Bernstein's mandate, as an independent officer of the P.E.I. Legislative Assembly.

In a Feb. 18 letter he sent to MLAs from all three parties represented in the legislature, Bernstein said it has been "both disappointing and surprising to me to see vigorous efforts made by a government department serving children, youth and families to severely limit my jurisdiction to access records."

Specifically, he said the new bill will narrow the authority of the Island's director of child protection to co-operate with his office through the disclosure of information.

If passed, it will mean he gets access to records without the consent of the parties involved only when he's investigating after a child has died or suffered a serious injury.

Required review

The Department of Social Development and Housing is replacing P.E.I.'s Child Protection Act after a mandated five-year review.

Once passed, it will be known as the Child, Youth and Family Services Act.

Bernstein has been reading drafts of the legislation as changes are made, and warns that the second draft is "even more severe and restrictive" than the first draft when it comes to limiting the availability of records.

The advocate also said his "constant urgings" to the department to harmonize the new bill with the Child and Youth Advocate Act seem to have gone unheard.

Speaking in the legislature last week, Social Development and Housing Minister Brad Trivers acknowledged the province had accepted only one of the 10 recommendations forwarded by Bernstein's office after it commissioned an outside expert from the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights from the University of Toronto to review the bill from a child rights perspective.

The recommendation government adopted was to require periodic reviews of the new legislation.

Other recommendations government has not incorporated in the bill include:

• creating a complaints mechanism accessible by children in care,
• coordinating the new legislation with the Child and Youth Advocate Act, and
• providing a more comprehensive definition of what constitutes the best interests of the child.

Trivers said the rest of the recommendations don't need to be included in the legislation, but could beimplemented as policy outside the act.

Other provinces' acts surveyed

A spokesperson for Trivers' department emailedCBCNewsTuesday to say changes to the legislation regarding the sharing of confidential information with Bernstein's office "were based on a jurisdictional scan among provinces and territories."

The spokesperson said the department has a meeting planned with Bernstein to review the current draft of the legislation "and to review how to best share information keeping the rights of client confidentiality a top consideration."

The email also pointed to 31 engagement sessions that formed the basis of public consultations over the review of the Child Protection Act.

'Like making sausage': King

But in the legislature, interim Liberal Leader Sonny Gallant questioned whether government is actually implementing any of the feedback it receives from the public, asking the premier:"Why are you wasting taxpayers' dollars on consultation processes when your departments just do what they want anyway?"

Gallant said consultations about the new Residential Tenancy Act had been received the same way, with those seeking changes left frustrated.

"I think everyone in this legislature who participates in the creation of legislation and changes to bills and regulations and legislation knows it's kind of like making sausage," Premier Dennis King replied. "It can be a difficult business sometimes."

Yet the premier promised, with regard to the Child, Youth and Family Services Act: "I will not let that legislation come to the table until we're happy that it meets the criteria of what everybody is trying to get to."