Opposition right to voice concerns

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2012 (5253 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

@:As part of the provincial government’s cabinet reshuffling announcement on Friday, Premier Greg Selinger announced the creation of a new Department of Children and Youth Opportunities, and a new minister to lead it — rookie Point Douglas MLA Kevin Chief.

Chief, a former youth programming co-ordinator in Winnipeg’s inner city, according to the Winnipeg Free Press, was first elected to the legislature last October. Selinger said the department will take over some existing programs in Health, Family Services and other departments.

“It will put services for young people and children in one department, on the prevention side, so that we can make those investments and put together those programs and activities that will prevent crime and allow young people to have the opportunity to thrive in our communities,” Selinger said, adding that the department will also launch new initiatives such as after-school programs.

Opposition parties immediately slammed the new department as little more than unnecessary and costly window dressing, designed to give the rookie backbencher more public exposure. Progressive Conservative deputy leader Kelvin Goertzen called it “eye candy” that would do little to improve services to the province’s children. It’s a criticism that is at once both fair and yet possibly unjust.

We say possibly, because such a department could well prove useful at focusing government action on a large part of Manitoba’s population that could use a bit more attention, if properly handled.

The 2006 census positioned Manitoba as having one of the youngest populations in the country, second only to Alberta, with more than 19 per cent of the province under the age of 14. Six years later, we would argue that many of that age group would still be classified as “youth.”

The creation of a Department of Children and Youth Opportunities is not unprecedented in this country either. Ontario has a Ministry of Children and Youth Services, as does Alberta, and B.C. has the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Each of these child-focused departments cross other departmental jurisdictions, and include programs for child care, adoption, foster care, youth with special needs, aboriginal children, the mental health of youth, youth justice, child sexual exploitation and early childhood development.

As Manitoba Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard pointed out on Friday, a judicial inquiry will begin this spring to look at the death of Phoenix Sinclair, a young girl who was brutally killed by her mother and stepfather in 2005 after case workers returned the child to her mother. At this point, we simply don’t know if the new Department of Children and Youth Opportunities is the government’s pre-emptive way of addressing problems within Manitoba’s child welfare system. In any case, we would hope such a department would be properly equipped to help prevent such tragedies from reoccurring.

And yet, we note with considerable alarm that the province is currently running a $1-billion deficit, and the cost of this new department will only be made clear — well, clearer perhaps — when the NDP delivers its spring budget.

When faced with such a financial burden, this is a time when governments should be looking at cutting costs, not increasing them.

The fact that the department of Water Stewardship, which was carved out of Conservation in 2004 and given a stand-alone minister, will be folded back into the conservation minister’s duties, simply proves that the NDP made a mistake in separating them in the first place.

Merging them again would have saved some costs, but that cost saving is lost when a government refuses to live within its means.

Any new department will need its own budget and staff, and will require additional funds to offset overruns that can be expected of any newly created office administration, not to mention a minister’s salary.

While it may yet be advantageous to build a child-focused department in the future, we believe that it should have been postponed until such time that this province had its finances in order. There is no reason that bureaucrats within the department of Healthy Living, Youth and Seniors could not find new ways to work more closely with their peers in Manitoba Justice and Manitoba Health, under the current system.

That’s why opposition complaints that the NDP is simply using government resources to its own political advantage have merit.