Turpel-Lafond: Delay placement of Métis girl

VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s representative for children and youth is urging the province’s attorney general to intervene in the case of a Métis toddler being adopted to non-aboriginal parents in Ontario.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said she is acting on advice from three leading Métis cultural experts and believes that the girl’s heritage has not been given adequate consideration.

In a letter to Attorney General Suzanne Anton, Turpel-Lafond has asked that a decision on the child’s placement be delayed for about a month so full indigenous consultation can take place.

“After the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we’re supposed to be in an era of reconciliation, of listening and changing how we do child welfare,” Turpel-Lafond said in an interview.

“I don’t think this case represents anything changed about child welfare. This is old-school child welfare, where you have a shutdown on the aboriginal viewpoint and you are not actually embracing them.”

The nearly three-year-old girl has been in the care of a Métis foster mother since she was two days old. Last week, the Vancouver Island woman and her husband lost a bid to adopt the toddler in the B.C. Court of Appeal.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development removed the girl from the couple’s home on Sunday and plans to move her next week to Ontario to live with the adoptive parents and her older sisters, whom she has never met.

None of the parties can be named because of a courtordered publication ban.

The B.C. Métis Federation has compared the case to the widespread placement of aboriginal children in non-native homes during the 1960s, and has joined the foster parents and birth parents in challenging it in B.C. Supreme Court.

The province said it had received the letter from TurpelLafond and would review it.