HOWE: Legitimate questions

Standoff couple jailed, but CAS inquiry still needed

By Rick Howe
The Daily News
July 1st, 2005

The justice system took it fairly easy on Carline VandenElsen and Larry Finck. Perhaps their silence as Justice Robert Wright passed sentence was the couple’s acknowledgment of his patience. During their trial, they hurled bitter and often outrageous comments at him.

This judge has thick skin. Some of the vitriol thrown his way by VandenElsen, in particular, might be something you’d expect from a drill sergeant.

Finck received a 41/2-year sentence. VandenElsen was handed a 31/2-year jail term. Finck was convicted of child abduction and weapons charges. VandenElsen was convicted of child abduction and firing a gun at police.

Prosecutor Rick Woodburn called the sentence “good and proper.”

In court, Woodburn described VandenElsen as “irrational and violent.” He said Finck “does not believe the laws of our land apply to him.”

Judge Wright said the couple shows no remorse for their actions, and no appreciation of the danger they put their infant daughter in. He called their behaviour bizarre and belligerent, though he insisted he did not take that into account in his sentencing decision.

The judge also said the couple’s allegations of a conspiracy between the government, children’s services and the justice system to sell babies on the black market are ridiculous.

Yet somewhere in all of Finck and VandenElsen’s bluster is a legitimate issue with Children’s Aid. NDP MLA Maureen MacDonald recently described the organization as having “more power than the police,” but without much in the way of checks and balances.

That lack of accountability raises suspicions about why Children’s Aid found it necessary to take an apparently healthy baby girl from her parents.

No yearly review

It has been pointed out the Hamm government is ignoring the Nova Scotia Children and Family Services Act. The law requires a yearly review of children’s services. There hasn’t been one since 1999.

Community Services Minister David Morse has an excuse. He says he could find no one to sit on the committee. This is a feeble effort by a weak minister in response to a clear violation of the law. Two child-welfare activists have filed court papers against the government for negligence in enforcing the act.

A group of residents calling themselves the MCF Inquiry Committee came together this week to call on Justice Minister Michael Baker to order a public inquiry into the Finck-VandenElsen matter. Group members say they’re concerned by what they call “a lack of external oversight to ensure that the Family Court, Children’s Aid Society and Department of Community Services are acting in the best interests of the child.”

Barricading themselves inside Finck’s mother’s home and firing a gun at police were not the wisest decisions Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen ever made. The justice system has meted out appropriate punishment for those transgressions. It’s what led to the standoff that raises concern.

The couple defended their actions as parents worried about losing a child to what they call a corrupt system.

Did Children’s Aid act in the best interests of this child? If we are to put our trust in a secretive agency that is supposed to protect children at risk, the questions raised about this case and others must be publicly addressed.

Does Children’s Aid adequately investigate allegations? There are cases where the agency has acted first, seized a child, and worried about the impact later. How many times has it been wrong?

Our faith can only be restored by an independent public inquiry.

rhowe@chumhalifax.com