KIMBER: Potholes litter path to public inquiry

By Stephen Kimber
The Daily News
July 4th, 2005

It’s been an interesting week on the other side of the media trenches.
I’ve recently become a member of a community group pushing for a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the seizure of the infant child of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen. I usually steer clear of joining such groups, partly because I already have a pulpit for my views, partly because I want to maintain my independence and partly — if I am to be honest — because I hate meetings.

But I’d become frustrated only writing about this particular case. Since the May 2004 highly publicized 67-hour standoff between Finck and VandenElsen and a heavily armed police swat team, I’ve written a half-dozen columns outlining my concerns about the role the Children’s Aid Society and Family Court played in taking this child from its parents, and about the massive use of police force to do it.

Each column generated e-mails, letters and phone calls, many from ordinary readers with no direct connection to the case or personal histories with Children’s Aid, most supporting my call for a public inquiry and many asking what they could do to help make an inquiry happen.

My only suggestion — that they write their MLA — seemed lame and unlikely to have much effect without an organized campaign behind it.

So when I got a call a few weeks ago from author Heather Laskey, a resident of the neighbourhood where the standoff took place, inviting me to a meeting she and some others were holding to discuss what they could do to right what they too saw as a wrong, I quickly agreed.

Last week, we — now known as the MCF Inquiry Committee (MCF is how the infant is described in court documents) — called a news conference to explain why a public inquiry is needed and to announce the committee’s plans to insert an advertisement in the next day’s Halifax Chronicle-Herald. The ad would outline the case for a public inquiry and encourage readers to write Justice Minister Michael Baker demanding one.

Just before the news conference, however, a Herald official called to say the paper wouldn’t run our ad without editorial changes (reasonable ones, in fact, to which we quickly agreed), and unless — as well as paying upfront for the ad — each member of the committee signed a letter to “indemnify and hold harmless The Halifax Herald Ltd., its officers and individuals acting on its behalf from any claims or causes of action” that might result from the ad.

That unusual request — when was the last time any newspaper asked Sobeys officials to sign a waiver absolving the paper of legal responsibility for the contents of their ads? — isn’t really so unusual in this very unusual case.

Ever since the standoff, in fact, media outlets have been grappling with a difficult dilemma: what can they legally publish or broadcast?

On the one hand, this is a child-custody case, and there are very clear rules in place that prohibit publishing any information that might reveal the identities of children involved in such cases.

On the other hand, the standoff — shotgun fired, police emergency response teams, snipers on roofs, neighbourhood evacuated — was a major news event that could not be understood without writing about the custody issue that triggered it all.

To complicate matters, the story raised a number of important questions of legitimate public interest. Were Children’s Aid and Family Court really acting in “the best interests of the child” when they took the five-month-old from her parents, or were they vindictively punishing two admittedly difficult parents for challenging their arbitrary authority? Did the police act appropriately, or did the massive deployment of police power actually create the crisis that followed?

How do you ask those questions without writing about the custody issue?

Even now, no one seems quite sure how to juggle these competing pressures. It took CBC Radio, for example, more than five hours and eight local newscasts’ worth of internal discussion last week to finally decide to run a story about our committee’s call for a public inquiry.

And the Herald, which had published its own first-rate, four-day series on the background to the case last week — the first real attempt to put the issues and personalities in context since Richard Cuthbertson’s excellent story on Larry Finck’s personal history appeared in The Daily News immediately after the standoff — decided not to post its own series on its website on the advice of its lawyers.

(Having raised the issue of how other media outlets have dealt with the story, I should note — gratefully — that my editors have not censored or substantively altered any of the columns I’ve written about the case.)

But this media conundrum — like the standoff circus and the courtroom craziness — is ultimately beside the point.

We are still left with questions — Why did authorities take the child in the first place? Who authorized the use of massive force to seize the child? Why does the child not have her own independent legal representation in court? What external checks and balances are in place to make sure that Children’s Aid, Family Court and the Community Services Department act in the interest of the child? — that can only be answered by a full, independent and public inquiry.

If you agree, I encourage you to write (5151 Terminal Rd., Halifax, N.S. B3J 2L6), call (902-424-4044) or e-mail the justice minister bakermg@gov.ns.ca or
michaelbakermla@ns.sympatico.ca demanding he appoints such an inquiry. It won’t happen otherwise.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca