View From the Legislature

It has been almost six years since the provincial government called an inquiry into the death of Phoenix Sinclair, the little five year old girl whose death went undiscovered for months by Child and Family Services. After more than half a decade of delays, it appears that this month the inquiry will finally begin hearing witnesses.

The delay in the inquiry has lasted longer than the life of little Phoenix. The answers as to how this little girl could have been removed from care, placed back in the hands of people who would torture and kill her, and then essentially have that death unnoticed for months, have been incredibly slow in coming.

The Premier who called the inquiry, Gary Doer, has been gone from office for years. The Minister who was responsible for the Department at the time is no longer there. Others, such as the Manitoba Government Employees Union, have actually tried to stop the inquiry from happening at all.

And all the while, through all the delays, questions have remained unanswered as to how this tragedy could have happened and whether enough has been done to prevent it from happening again. There is nothing that can be done to bring Phoenix Sinclair back or to undue the harm done to her. But a delay of half a decade only adds to the tragedy of this heart-wrenching case.

And too often it seems that there are roadblocks purposely put up in the way of answers to these types of horrible cases. This past week the daughter of an elderly lady who died after being sent home from a Winnipeg hospital in a taxicab on a cold day with no house keys was seeking answers as to what went wrong with her mothers care. Yet, no inquest has been scheduled to examine the facts of this situation and it appears that answers will be slow in coming for her as well.

The same situation happened with the death of Brian Sinclair who died after sitting for more than a day in an Emergency Room. Denials and delays marked the aftermath of his death as well when answers were sought.

The responsibility of any government is to minimize, the best it can, the mistakes in healthcare or childcare or other parts of government. When mistakes happen and they lead to tragic circumstances it is then the responsibility of government to seek out answers in a timely way to not only provide closure to those impacted but also to learn from mistakes to prevent them from happening again.

While it isn’t possible to undue a tragedy, the best that can come of it is the knowledge that it will not happen again because of lessons learned. But when those lessons are not learned or not learned quickly, it only serves to make a terrible situation even worse.