There is no tougher government ministry to manage than the children and development ministry, and last week to no one’s surprise Mitzi Dean became the latest minister to be moved out of the portfolio.
Dean was demoted down to Minister of State for Childcare, while Grace Lore moved from that junior post into the ever-hot frying pan that is the children and development ministry.
Lore is now the 14th minister in that role. The ministry was created by NDP Premier Glen Clark’s government in 1996 and it was put together by veteran deputy minister Bob Plecas.
The turnover of ministers has been rapid, with a few exceptions. Dean actually had the third-longest tenure at the helm, behind her predecessor Katrine Conroy and the person who was in the portfolio the longest: B.C. Liberal Stephanie Cadieux, who was there for almost five years.
The average time for any minister has been a little less than two years. There were four ministers in the five years of the NDP government in the latter part of the nineties. Penny Priddy was the first, followed by Lois Boone, Gretchen Brewin and Ed John.
When he was premier, Gordon Campbell appointed five ministers in less than 10 years: Mary Polak, Tom Christensen, Stan Hagen, Christy Clark and Gordon Hogg.
The job is seen as so thankless and politically risky that Clark balked at being moved from the safe confines of the education ministry to children and families. That cabinet shuffle was delayed until she was persuaded to take the job. She only stayed less than eight months before resigning from politics (only to return a few years later as party leader).
There have been so many tragedies associated with the ministry over the years and the odds are great that unfortunately there will be more. Opposition parties routinely call for the minister to resign more than the minister of any other portfolio.
One awful tragedy that contributed to Dean’s demotion involved two foster children near Chilliwack who were tortured and abused by their foster parents. One of the children, an 11-year-old boy, died as a result.
It emerged during the criminal trial of the foster parents that the ministry had not checked on the children for seven months, despite the ministry having a policy that requires that checks must happen every three months.
While there is no question ministers must be accountable for their ministry’s actions, I’ve long held the view that children and family development ministers are judged harsher and often more unfairly than any of their colleagues.
No ministry must manage a system that is often on the edge of disaster and frequently involves children on the margins of society and in the depths of poverty, often exposed to dangerous situations. The list of children whose deaths were caused by abuse the ministry didn’t detect is a depressingly long one, and includes such names as Mathew Vaudreuil (whose death led to the Thomas Gove Commission, which led to the creation of the ministry and the Children’s Commissioner), Sherry Charlie, Savannah Hall, Amanda Simpson and others.
Grace Lore now has the unenviable task of managing the most difficult file in government. Good luck to her.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC.
