Softening stance

Premier Wade MacLauchlan taking less hardline approach to calls for child advocacy office for P.E.I.

Premier Wade MacLauchlan appears to be softening his stance on a child advocacy office for P.E.I.

Calls for a child advocate for Prince Edward Island have been ongoing for the last two years, but MacLauchlan has remained firm that beefing up existing front-line services for families and adding a child lawyer and a parenting coordinator to the mix are better ways to address service gaps for vulnerable children in P.E.I.

But on Friday, MacLauchlan indicated he might be willing to consider a child advocate should the current approach prove inadequate.

When asked why he would not allow the legal and front-line services being developed to be placed within an independent office of a child advocate, he said it’s “not a question why not or a question of either/or, it’s a question of first things first.”

“You always have to be willing to consider what more you can do, and that’s our whole approach as government,” he told reporters.

“Our approach is: first things first, put the resources where they meet the greatest need and where they can make the greatest difference.”

A coroner’s inquest jury recommended a child advocate for P.E.I. following the tragic death of four-year-old Nash Campbell at the hands of his mother in a grisly murder-suicide in 2013.

P.E.I. remains the only province in Canada without a child advocate.

Debates over this issue regularly boil over into heated, even vitriolic, exchanges in the provincial legislature, as Progressive Conservative MLAs and the leader of the Green party regularly press the premier on why he continues to resist establishing this independent office.

It happened again Thursday evening, as MacLauchlan was trying to pass one of four bills that must be amended to establish the new child lawyer and parenting co-ordinator positions as part of a his “alternative dispute resolution model.”

Opposition Leader Jamie Fox was questioning MacLauchlan on one of the bills when, suddenly, PC MLA James Aylward took Transportation Minister Paula Biggar to task for laughing at Fox’s line of questioning.

“This is an extremely serious issue… if this is a joke to you, then maybe you should walk out those doors,” he said.

Biggar took offense at this, saying Aylward had no right to tell her to leave.

“I certainly do take this serious. It’s not up to him, in my opinion, to chastise me.”

After a few tense moments, they moved on with the bill, with Opposition MLAs grilling MacLauchlan for close to three hours on the child advocacy issue.

Earlier in the sitting, Green Leader Peter Bevan-Baker asked the premier to table the analysis his department used to determine his alternative approach was better for P.E.I.

MacLauchlan agreed and tabled information showing child advocacy offices across Canada offer a widely varying suite of services, depending on the province. He also tabled cost comparisons for these offices Thursday, showing Ontario spends the most on its child advocacy office at $11 million annually, while the Yukon spends the least at $500,000.

He estimates a child advocate office in P.E.I. would cost between $700,000 and $1.3 million, although he has provided no breakdown or rationale for this cost estimate.

MacLauchlan says he has strong faith that the legislative changes he is making to add legal and parent co-ordination services will go a long way in addressing a current lack of these services for children and families in crisis.

“We now can offer something that has never been available in this province, and that is an advance on what you can find elsewhere in the country, in the case of a parenting co-ordinator,” he said.

“I’m prepared to say this will be a great achievement for our government.”