Manitoba Cover-up

October 16, 2006 permalink

Last week the Province of Manitoba released three reports created in response to scandal over the death of Phoenix Sinclair, who was returned to parents who killed her and kept the death secret for months. The three reports (all pdf) are on the web at:

• link Strengthening the Commitment
• link Special Case Review in Regard to the Death of Phoenix Sinclair
• link Honouring their spirits, Child Death Review

These reports are not worth the server space to make a local copy. In the three reports, the word "father" appears only once, in the phrase "foster father". The word "mother" never appears at all in the second, in the other two it appears 28 times outside footnotes: eight times as "high-risk mother", eight times as mother addicted to drugs or alcohol, three times as mothers whose children died in their custody, and once in "foster mother". The only favorable reference was four times in a quote from a midwife supporting motherhood. It is apparent that Manitoba does not consider mom and dad to be resources useful in the care of its children.

The reports purport to deal with the deaths of 99 children, yet only one, Phoenix Sinclair is mentioned by name. These reports act more as a cover-up than an exposé. In other jurisdictions, where reporters have found the names of dead children, there was little connection between the reports of the bureaucracy and the truth. For example, look at cases in Colorado and Indiana. Is there any reason to believe Manitoba is better?