Winnipeg Free Press

As you’ll read it today’s Free Press column, the Northern Manitoba Child and Family Services Authority had planned to spend $140,000 on three public service announcements decrying the negative images of their agency.

Yesterday, communications manager Rhonda Gordon Powers insisted the ads were simply intended to counteract sterotyping about First Nations people. The money for the ads, she said, wasn’t being directed away from the care of children. Communications budgets would be cut to the bone and the savings used to send out a positive message.

But that’s not what the briefing paper she wrote said. It named Mia Rabson and me. It called CJOB “a right wing news radio program”. It insisted the work Rabson and I have done exposing the failures and fragilities of the child welfare system “released an onsalught of racial attitudes”.

Here’s the part where she was talking you:

“The idea children are left to suffer at the hands of the very people who are paid to take care of them appeals to the visceral heart of the uneducated.”

Gage Guimond. Call me uneducated but he’s still dead.

She went further. Here are her comments on the readers of this blog, commenting on Baby Mark’s biological mother: “… it was obvious the majority of the posts were written by highly educated individuals, painfully ignorant and racist individuals.”

I have repeatedly said there’s no room for racism on this blog. Some of you were upset when comments were blocked that were deemed to be racist. So be it. We need to discuss issues, not spread hatred.  But the Northern Authority decided to spend a great deal of time accusing Rabson and me of ignoring facts, promoting racism and skewing the truth.

We’ve overlooked a great deal of the mud that has been flung at us over the past year. I was told one of the authorities had hired a private investigator to go through my past with a fine tooth comb. We couldn’t prove it and, although I haven’t led a stain-free life, who cares? What really concerns me is that the child welfare agencies charged with the protection of the vulnerable are instead wasting precious resources on this BS.

Rhonda Gordon Powers is a well-educated, savvy and commited woman. On a personal level, I’ve always liked her. But she and her agency (and all other CFS authorities) need to examine their priorities. With children in care dying and desperate, should they really be wasting their energy trying to discredit reporters?

I know that I’m jumping the gun here but I’ve been surrounded by Mother’s Day stories this week.

First up is the piece you’ll read in today’s Free Press featuring four kids who entered a Why I Love My Mom contest. They won iPod shuffles for their efforts and their moms won the arm feeling that comes when your kid admits you’ll pretty swell.

On Sunday, you’ll read my tale of an uber-foster mother who has seen scores of children pass through her home in two decades. She’s an inspiration and she comes with some practical advice for raising children. Discipline and consistency, anyone?

Finally, tonight I’m hosting the Villa Rosa Celebration of Motherhood dinner. Villa Rosa, which those of us who grew up in Winnipeg once called ‘the home for unwed mothers’, is a wonderful facility that care for pregnant women, helps them get an education and puts them on the path to independence.

This Sunday? Well, I’m hoping for some burnt toast and runny eggs in bed. There may be a bunch of tulips or some chocolate. Mostly it will be a chance to spend some time with my daughters. Later in the day I’ll be cooking a roast for my mom.

Tell me how you’re going to celebrate. Share some advice you got from your mom. Tell me your secrets for raising children.

And stand up straight.

Those of you who read  Mike McIntyre’s blog (and who read my coumn in Sunday’s paper) will now be aware that four children in the remote Northern community of Shamattawa tried to kill themselves last week.

 The youngest was nine.

These were separate incidents as, one at a time, kids decided they’d had enough of their misrerable lives.

So why did no one in the south know about these attempted suicides until McIntyre got a tip? Why wasn’t the Northern Affairs minister pounding on his desk in the Legislature and vowing change?

This isn’t a new story. Shamattawa has an overwhelming substance abuse problem. It’s a dry reserve but people still manage to smuggle in booze or nail polish or mouthwash. Ninety-eight per cent of the population hasn’t got a job. It’s not like there’s a McDonalds in the community where the kids can work after school, if they go to school.

But the people from the Northern CFS Authority I met with Friday, people who greeted me with wariness and a fair amount of suspicion, also wanted the stories that are positive in the community to be told. Stories about elders who are trying to teach another generation how to be parents, stories about people volunteering their time, stories about therapy sessions intended to heal families.

I don’t have any answers. My gut response was to say we need to swoop in and save all these kids. But the question is “save them how?” The Sixties Scoop didn’t work. Removing children from their families, however fractured, isn’t the answer either. Can we build mental health care facilities near these kids? Can we find employment for their parents?

How do you save a generation that has known little more than substance abuse, terrible poverty and a future without dreams?

I am turning into my father.

That’s not a horrifying thought, although he is a curmudgeon of the first order. He’s opinionated, bossy, often cranky and never shy. I’m a chip off the old block.

But today I sat down with a different senior citizen, Harry Hill. He’s a Charleswood senior with some strong thoughts on how we spend our money, what we value and how we’re going to hell in a handcart. I enjoyed our visit immensely.

 What Mr. Hill talked about today (and what you’ll read in tomorrow’s column) is how we are seduced by advertisers to buy what we don’t need and what, often, will harm us. Bacon double cheeseburger, anyone?

The result is that many North Americans live with crippling debt, never stopping to think that maybe they don’t need things they can’t afford, like a second car or a plasma TV. Mr. Hill said it with wit and charm but he is convinced we’re setting ourselves up for financial doom.

The problem is, who is going to be brave enough to step off the treadmill and say “enough!”? Or, as my dad would put it, “if you keep peeing into the wind you’re going to get wet.”

Colorful guy, my dad. But he’s right — and his own frugal ways mean he and my mom are enjoying a retirement most of us can only dream of.

I’ve been all over the place with my column and this blog in the past seven days. As I wrote in a note to an editor this morning, I’ve had that August feeling all week.

August, as all journalists know, is the dead zone for news. Nothing happens, no one is in town and you still have to fill the paper.

 But still we manage.

I talked to Kathy Pacheco early in the week. She’s the wife of Michael Pacheco, the city worker whose legs were crushed when an alleged drunk driver pinned him between her car and a city vehicle early Tuesday morning. The good news is he had surgery today and the doctors managed to save his right leg. The bad news? Well, this young father of one faces a very long recuperation.

If Joan Henderson, the woman charged with drunk driving in this case, is found guilty, what sort of punishment is just? I don’t want to hear what our limited laws allow. I’d like to hear what you think is appropriate.

 And on the subject of justice, what about the Mother of the Year who was acquitted on charges of procuring after her 12-year-old daughter testified that, when she was nine, she was ordered up to her bedroom by a middle-aged man, told to strip naked and fondled? The girl says she later saw the man give her mother cash. Lawyers suggested it might have been for drugs. The girl had to admit that might have been possible.

Mother of the Year, who has admitted to other sex-related offences, took a stroll on this one.

Justice? I don’t think so.

We talked a lot about anorexia on the blog this week. I’m still mulling over some of your comments. Does body image matter so much that women are willing to die for what they perceive as perfection? OK: Dumb question. Some women are. But I’m still not satisfied we’ve moved any closer to answers. How do we help young women stop believing they have to starve to be pretty?

 In Sunday’s column, look for me to be (I hope) funny. Our official humor columnist, Doug Speirs, is on the couch after tearing his Achilles tendon in a tragic cake decorating-related accident. I am trying to bring a smile to readers who are suffering from the loss of a columnist who frequently describes himself as the size of a large appliance.

It’s a tough job. I’m the size of a large Q-Tip.

I sit kitty-corner to Doug and I can assure you he’s being unfair to household appliances everywhere with his analogy. My fridge is at least as large as Doug and could clearly beat him in a foot race.

 Thoughts? Musings? Let me have them.

I’m going to begin this blog entry with a frank confession. I am 5′10″. When I was in university, I weighed 115 pounds. It wasn’t my metabolism, my genes or a late growth spurt.

It was an eating disorder, only back then we didn’t have a name for it. The average teenager hadn’t heard of anorexia or bulimia. They certainly hadn’t heard of pro-ana websites (mostly because we didn’t have the Internet when I was in university).

I got my weight dangerously low by eating only white food. I’m typing these words and they sound nuts now. Back then, I drank milk, ate yogurt, cottage cheese, noodles without sauce, saltines and not much else. I see pictures of myself and I am gaunt and very sad looking.

At the time, I thought I looked like a model. The sad thing is, I was probably still not thin enough for the fashion world.

It ended — sort of — when I was hospitalized.

I’m still very thin. A large part of that is just my build, my fitness routine and the fact that I don’t really like deep-fried foods or dessert. Just don’t get between me and a plate of steaming pasta or hot bread!

But I now watch my weight constantly, checking my jeans to make sure they’re not too loose and a couple of favorite dresses to make sure I can still fill them out. If they don’t fit it’s time to start adding calories.

So when I started to hear about “Ana” and “Mia” I got worried. They’re not real girls. They are code for anorexia and bulimia, a shorthand for young women with eating disorders. They have normalized the skewed body image, the binging and purging and the very serious health risks.

There are countless websites where girls can go for advice on everything from how to hide your eating disorder from family and friends to how many calories there are in a piece of celery.

Some have photo galleries — both submitted art of real starving girls and of celebrities like Kate Moss, Nicole Richie and the Olsen twins.

This is very dangerous stuff. The French are considering legislation to ban images of ultra-thinness. Some members of the modeling community (Spain, for example) won’t allow models to walk the runways if their BMI is below a certain level.

 But is there anything we really can do? I’m going to examine this question in an on-going series of stories but I’d like your feedback.

Can we legislate “normal”? Is our hyper-concern about obese kids leading some of them to starve themselves? Should we look to the fashion industry to reflect healthy images or do we accept that’s fantasy?

 I’m very interested in your input.

Finally, I don’t know what I weigh today. I deliberately don’t own a scale. My guess, based on the fit of my jeans, is somewhere around 130.

Too low for my height, I know, but high enough that I’m active, healthy, able to work out and keep up with my kids and, when I see pictures, I don’t see a gaunt-looking, sad woman.

Please check out my Perspective piece in Sunday’s Free Press. It’s on the people left behind when soldiers are deployed — their wives and husbands and their kids.

 It doesn’t really matter what you think of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. It’s hard not to be moved when you hear friends talk about pacts they’ve made to fly to Germany together if a husband’s body needs to be reclaimed; to shake your head when you hear a four-year-old describe her father’s job as “kicking the bad guys’ butts.”

We talk a  lot about courage in our society. We mourn — at least some of us do — indirectly when a Canadian soldier is killed. But we tend to overlook the civilians who are waiting for them at home.

 Read the story — and let me know what you think.

As you may have read in Mike McIntyre’s exclusive report in today’s Free Press, the crack-addicted mother of six children pleaded guilty Tuesday to running a brothel. It was in her own home — and her kids, who ranged in age from 22 months to 11 years — were repeatedly exposed to people having sex, acts of violence and drug use.

 She’ll be sentenced May 22 along with a nieghbour who allowed the same sort of criminal activity to take place in her house.

Not to put too much emphasis on this but the kids’ beds were being used for sex acts. The mother was also charged with getting some of her own kids (remember: the oldest was 11) involved in prostitution. Most of those charges were stayed although one charge of procuring remains before the court.

 The woman’s lawyer dismisses any charge of the woman involving her children in the sex trade.

“They’re not Mother Teresa,” he said of the two women charged, “but they felt it was safer to have this kind of activity in their home than in the backseat of some john’s car.”

Safer for whom? I’ve met the foster parents of those six children and I can assure the lawyer that the on-going trauma of those kids makes it pretty clear it wasn’t safer for them.

Oh, what a fun week it’s been.

It began with a tip from a CFS insider. The executive director of the Anisihnaabe CFS has been fired, the source claimed. Another employee at Sakeeng CFS was also sacked.

There were mutterings that a pogrom was taking place, the source said, with staff being “disappeared ” if they were suspected of leaking information to the media or disagreeing with the current regime.

Shades of Pinochet? It couldn’t be.

I did my job. I called the communications officer for Child and Family Services. She referred me to the communications director for the Southern Authority.

For three days I tried to get a straight answer. What I got was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Had a senior official in a CFS authority been fired? Were other jobs on the line? What did this mean for kids in care in Manitoba?

Seemed pretty simple to me.

So why did the Southern Authority PR dude, with a certain glee in his voice, tell me he could “neither confirm nor deny” the facts? Is this a game to these folks?

The so-called communications people for Family Services and the Southern Authority dodged and feinted for days. The answer wasn’t black and white, they said. It was the other guy who could answer it, they claimed.

Then they said the answer rested with Elsie Flette, the Southern Authority CEO and, darn the luck, she was out of town and out of cell phone range.

This bait and switch, while it might amuse the CFS flacks, does nothing to answer the questions at the core of the child welfare crisis in this province. Have other children been harmed in care, their cases hidden from public view?

Is there more to the turmoil than meets the eye?

Who is actually in charge of the First Nations authorities? Is it Family Services Minister Gord Mackintosh or is it Elsie Flette, CEO of the Southern Authority?

Why are so many CFS staff terrified to speak out about what they consider to be mismanagement? Is it paranoia or a very real fear they’ll be fired?

I wish I had answers for you tonight. What I know is this:

My final question (for the week) to Gord Mackintosh’s flack was this: Does Elsie Flette report to the Minister? It took all day but here was the answer:

“The CEO of each Authority is accountable to the Authority Board.

“Each Authority is responsible to comply with Provincial legislation, regulation, standards and policy, and the government role is through the Child Protection Branch, which reports to the minister.

“FYI, Anishinaabe CFS was established in 1982. The agency currently provides services to five communities – Lake Manitoba, Lake St. Martin, Pinayamootang (Fairford), Little Saskatchewan and Dauphin River.

“Here are pertinent sections of the Act.

1) Section 6 (1) of The Child and Family Services Authorities Act states that the management and affairs of each authority must be directed by a Board of Directors. The duties of Board of Directors are further outlined in Section 9 of the Act and include the following:

The directors of a board must

(a) act honestly and in good faith, with a view of the best interests of the authority and the children and families for which it is responsible: and

(b) exercise the care, diligence and skill that a reasonable and prudent person would exercise in comparable circumstances, and carry out their responsibilities in accordance with this Act

The Act does not identify any further or specific roles and function of the Board of Directors.

2) The Child and Family Services Authorities Act was passed unanimously by the provincial legislature on November 23, 2003.

3) The Board of Directors of the Southern Authority is appointed by Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs ( MC). It currently has 10 members and it is governed by a set of by-laws that have been drafted using legislation as a guide. The term of office for the Board of Directors of the Southern Authority is currently set at 4 years.

4) It operates at arms length from the political body (AMC) that appoints its members.”

Well now, that clears it up.

Was the ED actually fired? Hard to know. The Southern Authority sent out an incomprehensible news release Thursday talking about a “Quality Assurance Review of Anishnaabe Child and Family Services.”

There are efforts being made to “stabalize management and services” within some communities,” it said.

What does that really mean? Beats me.

But this is something you can count on: If the people in power are so busy playing games with the media, refusing to answer basic questions about their operations and acting as though there is no accountability, how do we konw what else they’re doing?

Gord Mackintosh, this is your department. It’s time to prove you’re in charge of it.

The spring break holiday is over, the foolish teenagers are peeling and I’m wondering who is going to make me the next pina colada. Jeez, it’s hard coming back to reality.

 I’m back on CFS stories this week. My e-mail box was filled with letters from people who have their own stories to share about the system, their reactions to Gord Mackintosh’s promise to put the safety of children above all other considerations and the niggling fears that the entire child welfare system is being held together with bits of string and a great deal of hope.

As well, I’ll be telling Free Press readers how the great Want versus Need experiment ended in my house. In a nutshell, you can lead a teenager to a moral choice but you can’t make her blink.