B.C. Liberals need a minister for kids
May 28, 2009
Georgia Straight
By Pieta Woolley

The NDP critic for children and family development, Nicholas Simons, can name three B.C. Liberal politicians he’d like to see as ministers in charge of the portfolio. However, not one of them—Carole Taylor, Olga Ilich, and Tom Christensen—ran for reelection on May 12.

“I’m not surprised they’re not there anymore,” Simons, a long-time B.C. social worker and second-term MLA for Powell River–Sunshine Coast, told the Straight. “They must know there’s something deeply flawed about how this government has been managing social programs.”

Simons said there isn’t a single elected member of the new Liberal government who has the background to understand the ministry. That’s going to hurt B.C. kids even more, he said.

Liberal spokesperson Chad Pedersen told the Straight that no one in the Liberal caucus immediately came to mind, in terms of having a career that would prepare them to be minister of children and family development. He noted, however, that Linda Reid is a former critic of the ministry, a former minister of state for childcare, and is currently minister of state for early childhood development. …

… Simons accused the Liberal government of making the child-welfare system more expensive, disrupting children’s lives by moving them to cheaper foster homes, taking child-protection powers away from frontline social workers, and creating circumstances that have caused the number of kids in care to rise.

“The people who are paying attention to social programs know that we are creating a social deficit the likes of which we’ve never seen,” Simons said.

That deficit, he argued, is a social and financial debt that future generations will have to pay just as much as a budget deficit.