STINSON: WHOSE CHILD IS IT ANYWAY?

WHOSE CHILD IS IT ANYWAY?

The case of a Halifax couple who have been ordered to never see their young daughter again has raised troubling questions about Nova Scotia's child welfare system.

National Post Tuesday, August 2, 2005
Page: A7
Section: Canada
Byline: Scott Stinson
Source: National Post

In the early hours of May 19, 2004, heavily armed officers of the RCMP Emergency Response Team descended on a home on a quiet Halifax street. Four people were inside, and none of them planned to come out. Sixty-seven hours later, two of the home's occupants were under arrest, one was dead of an apparent heart attack, and the fourth resident – a five-month-old girl -- was in the care of the local Children's Aid Society.

The standoff was only the beginning of the problems for the husband and wife taken away in handcuffs on that night 14 months ago. They were sentenced last month to lengthy prison terms for their roles in the confrontation with police -- in which a blast from a shotgun sent pellets over the heads of the RCMP officers -- and their daughter has since been placed in the permanent care of the Halifax CAS. Child apprehensions in this country are nothing new, but some Haligonians -- including university professors, lawyers, and the local Elizabeth Fry Society -- say the case raises troubling questions about Nova Scotia's child welfare system. They want a public inquiry to explain what compelled the CAS to seize a child from the care of its own parents and why the police arrived bearing semi-automatic weapons and a battering ram to do so.

The province, critics say, took the baby girl from her parents not because of what they did but because of who they are. The 43-year-old mother and 51-year-old father -- who may not be named in order to protect the child's identity -- share an unusual bond beyond their marriage. Both have lost acrimonious custody disputes from previous marriages and both were charged with abducting those children from their legal guardians.

The mother was briefly an international fugitive in October, 2000, when she packed her seven-year-old triplets in the trunk of her car and drove them across the Ontario border into the United States and eventually to Acapulco, Mexico. Their history with the child welfare system has caused the couple to distrust authorities with an intensity that borders on the pathological, as even some of their supporters acknowledge. During criminal trials that ended in May, the couple insisted they were victims of a vast government conspiracy to remove children from low-income families and place them with
wealthy benefactors. They fired their lawyers and represented themselves in court, which local reports said led to frequent outbursts from the defendants, who levied wild accusations at witnesses, lawyers and judges.

Ray Kuszelewski knows first-hand the difficulties of dealing with the father. He represented the man in the early stages of the criminal proceedings, before being fired when he refused to use his client's defence to promote the conspiracy theory. Mr. Kuszelewski says that despite his former client's abrasive, combative nature, the man has a point. ''Regardless of [the father and mother] and their statements and their beliefs ... there are still issues that need to be addressed," he says. Mr. Kuszelewski, one of eight Haligonians on a committee that is pushing for a public inquiry into the Halifax CAS, says there has never been a proper explanation for why Children's Aid had an order to put the couple's child under supervisory care before she had even been born. (The mother fled Halifax with the newborn in January, 2004, when she learned of the custody order and returned a month later under a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest.)

The lawyer notes that the father lost a fight to raise his other daughter, now an adolescent, whom he wanted to remove from an Ontario native reserve after her mother died, while the mother lost her children in a dispute with her former husband. ''But this is a child of that couple, of two people who had problems individually of a different sort,'' Mr. Kuszelewski says. ''Any rational person would say these things are not the same [as their problems in the past]. ''How is it that some Ontario issue in the past is enough to trigger a call for an unborn child, which trumps all the other cases in Halifax to the point where the child is 20 days old and is already before the court?''

Stephen Kimber, a journalism professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax and another member of the newly formed committee, says he sees this case as a simple issue: ''What was the reason for taking this kid? Unless they can come up with a better reason than '[the couple] were involved in a custody battle and they challenged authority,' then I don't think they have much of a case.'' Mr. Kimber says if the Halifax CAS, which declined a request for comment on the case and the calls for a public inquiry, could show that the man and woman ''were a danger to their child, then that's a different thing, but
they haven't shown that.'' The Nova Scotia Supreme Court saw things differently, ruling late last month that the two were ''consumed with their perception of a corrupt family
justice system,'' that they were unable to act in the best interests of their child and that she ''would be at substantial risk of physical and emotional harm if returned to her parents' care.''

Mr. Kuszelewski says there is no doubt the couple were confrontational and difficult from the moment they learned the CAS wanted a role in the care of their child, which as he says was the point ''when the whole thing went off the rails.'' ''What happened in the standoff, and the shooting of the gun and all that stuff is terrible and there is legitimate reason why you can't let that go,'' Mr. Kimber says, ''but if it all keeps coming back to the question of why did [CAS] do this in the first place, if they can't justify that, then
it seems to me you have a problem.'' Michael Baker, the Conservative Justice Minister, has said he will not hold an inquiry into the case or the CAS, which says it will not discuss its reasons for action due to privacy laws.

Mr. Kimber suggests that many people in Nova Scotia are ''appalled'' by the series of events that began with the Halifax standoff, but he thinks it will take pressure from opposition politicians to convince the Tories to hold an inquiry. ''Because of what happened in the standoff, and the gun being fired, and because of [the couple's] personalities, there seems to be a lack of desire to get deeply into this by the NDP or Liberals,'' he says. ''I think they'd just prefer it goes away.'' There are hints, however, that the government will feel some pressure to provide answers to the questions Mr. Kimber and his associates are asking.

Graham Steele, an NDP member of the provincial legislature, has gone to court to force the government to appoint an advisory committee to review legislation governing the child welfare system. Mr. Steele says the Child and Family Services Act requires the review be carried out annually, but it hasn't been conducted since 1999. He says his court action is not directly related to this case, but that the furor it created ''threw a spotlight'' on the lack of oversight in the child welfare system.

The Halifax chapter of the Elizabeth Fry Society, while also choosing not to directly address the complaints raised by the mother, said recently it supports a CAS inquiry to explain what it sees as a sharp jump in the number of children taken into state care in the past couple of years. Donna Phillips, executive director of the non-profit organization that supports women in conflict with the law, said her staff has seen ''a huge increase in the number of women who are losing their children, particularly involving women with mental illness.''

Ms. Phillips said the society's outreach co-ordinator estimates 35% of her clients ''are involved with CAS trying to get their children back,'' up from only 5% two years ago. Mr. Steele says the statements from Elizabeth Fry will add to pressure on the government to give some of the questions surrounding Children's Aid a full public airing. ''The fact that a very well-regarded and serious organization is calling for the same thing makes it that much harder for the department to dismiss it as a few paranoid crackpots.'' The mother and father vow to continue their fight. She claims to be on a hunger strike while in prison, where she is serving a 3 1/2-year sentence. Her husband was sentenced to 4 1/2 years, but both have appealed their convictions. They are also appealing the court order that said they would never see their daughter again. They continue to represent themselves in court.

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NOTE from NewsRoomWatch:

Just wanted to point to the fact that Carline didn't pack her kids in the trunk and drove off to Mexico. Border crossings were done that way, as well as times when it would be more likely to be spotted in big cities, the chidlren rehearsed how they would do that, they were eager and it was an adventure for them. They were always free to tell their mom to go back to Canada. Which they didn't.

Contrary to what the custodial father said to the press, they didn't spend 4 weeks of horror! They LOVED IT! Who then REALLY abducted the children?