Bill No. 180 - Fatality Investigations Act. - Second Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, thank you to the minister and to my colleague for their comments. As my colleague has stated, I think that to the minister's point of knowing better leading to doing better, this is certainly a positive step.

Along with those folks in this House who have served as first responders and have encountered first-hand some of the terrible situations that may lead to the establishment of an investigation under one of these committees, we all also know that the Minister of Community Services acts as the custodian for children in care. I know that any minister in that position would want to get to the bottom of the issue of the death of a youth in care.

We are particularly pleased in this proposed legislation to see the inclusion of trend analysis. I think anywhere we can get more data, that leads to more understanding and gives us a better opportunity to address the issues contemplated by the establishment of these committees.

In particular, with both of these committees, we know that there are systemic issues and biases involved in these types of tragedies, especially in the case of intimate-partner violence. It's essential that we identify where the systemic failures are. I am hopeful that in conducting trend analysis - in looking at the data in this way - we will have the ability to better do that, and then hopefully that will be a very useful tool for the entire Department of Justice to work from.

To that end, as I think the minister indicated in his opening comments, we are somewhat concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability in these committees. Of course, we completely understand that the situations contemplated, which would come before these committees, are very sensitive, and that the rights of privacy of the families and people involved are paramount, without question.

But that being said, given the current wording of the bill, as I understand it, we may not ever know what recommendations come from that committee and whether or not those recommendations are acted upon. I'm sure that the hard-working staff in the department have decided that that's the compromise that needs to be made, but it does worry us somewhat.

To that end, while we are pleased to see the establishment of the Child Death Review Committee, we in the NDP caucus - in particular, my colleague for Dartmouth North - have been advocating vociferously and for quite some time for a child and youth advocate. It is our position that the establishment of this committee does not remove the need for such an office. The office of a child and youth advocate, if properly constituted, would in fact conduct independent reviews of this kind and would also make recommendations.

It's somewhat concerning, to my point of accountability and transparency. Again, we're happy that this decision has been made, but it does leave a lingering question about whether this is a more efficient and inexpensive route to the very important issue that's been identified than the child and youth advocate office in this particular instance. It's because of those types of lingering questions that we continue to push for more robust boards and committees that are ever more accessible to the public and as binding as possible on the government that they serve because we simply don't know, without information, whether these committees, as contemplated in this legislation or other committees that have been constituted, are being properly relied upon, whether their recommendations are being followed, and how they are being made use of.

So, with those few comments, I will say that we do support the spirit of this bill and we do applaud the establishment of these committees. We do wish that they went a bit further and we very much look forward to the comments of presenters at Law Amendments.