PROTESTERS VOW TO STAY
Await response to action list
REGINA The province wants to see the teepees removed, but members of the Justice For Our Stolen Children camp in front of Saskatchewan’s Legislative Building are vowing to stay until they see steps to improve what they consider systematic failures of government institutions.
Members of the protest camp outlined their list of “concrete and actionable items” for the province to take. People from the camp, which currently is home to 12 teepees near the Legislative Building, met for four hours with provincial government ministers on Monday morning.
The list of items the campers want addressed dealt largely with Social Services and the foster care system. It was presented to media on Tuesday morning.
There is a call to review all permanent wards and all long-term wards. It calls for the province to demonstrate the use of in-home supervision in lieu of apprehensions. A call for a moratorium on all adoptions and a stop to any planned expansions within the foster care system is also included.
Camp members say they will remain for at least two weeks, and at that time aim to meet again with the province to see what progress has been made on these calls to action.
Prescott Demas, one of the camp leaders, said, “Whatever happens to this camp depends on what happens with that meeting,” and characterized Monday’s meeting as “just a start of what is coming.”
But Attorney General Don Morgan, who spoke with Saskatoon reporters on the issue Tuesday, said he is “not inclined to have a meeting ... as long as the teepees are in place.”
“I think if they want to have a further meeting, as their group, they need to show some good faith and call for the teepees to be taken down. I know they’ve been put up by other people but they need to show that good faith,” he said.
The protest camp was set up in February in the wake of the acquittals for men charged in the deaths of two young Indigenous people, Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan and Tina Fontaine in Manitoba.
Since Day 1, supporters say the goal has been to start a conversation with the province to address issues like the over-representation of Indigenous children in the foster care system and inequality in the justice system.
Funding to Child and Family Services maintenance and support in Saskatchewan decreased in the 2018-19 budget by three per cent from the year prior, although funding for community-based organizations and program delivery related to foster care increased.
Since 2012, the province has been reviewing its child welfare system.
That includes a proposition to repeal Persons of Sufficient Interest (PSI) legislation. In place since 1989, a person of sufficient interest is defined in a section of the Child and Family Services Act and aims to be designated for a child who is in need of protection.
Now, the government is proposing replacing PSIS with a “kinship care framework” that will offer a “balance of responsibility between extended family and government care.”
Social Services’ strategic plan this year calls for 60 per cent of children in out-of-home care to be placed with extended family by March 31, 2022, and for an additional 150 new approved foster homes. Currently, 57.5 per cent of children in out-of-home care are placed with extended family.
But it’s clear those making up the camp, many of whom have personal experiences with the foster care system, are calling for more significant changes than that.
“Families need to be healed, the system as it’s functioning now is not working for anyone,” said Robyn Pitawanakwat, who later added, “The amount of adoptions that are happening, and the reasons why they are happening, are not OK.”