Former Youth Watchdog Takes Child Advocacy to School

Former provincial youth watchdog Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond will continue her advocacy for children through her new roles as both a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law and as the inaugural director of the university’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.

“I’ll be teaching a class on children and the law, and I’m developing that course now,” Turpel-Lafond told The Tyee yesterday. “It’s a whole new way of looking at children and the law. I want to build that and train the lawyers of tomorrow in that area.”

Turpel-Lafond, who served as B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth from 2006 to 2016, says child law issues are breaking new ground in child welfare, family law, and even consent, like those raised by a recent opiate overdose death of a teenage boy in Oak Bay who was allowed to consent to taking prescription drugs that medical professionals have refused to disclose to his parents following his death.

“Even exploring issues of what does that mean to have consent? And is it the law? Is it not the law?” said Turpel-Lafond. “Really doing the deep dive as a researcher, as a scholar, and also as a teacher to pull out of students what their thoughts are.”

Turpel-Lafond, who served as a Saskatchewan Provincial Court judge for 20 years and taught law as a tenured professor at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, also hopes to expand her teachings to other UBC departments, training future professionals like nurses, doctors, and social workers who work with children.

As director of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre that officially opened earlier this month, Turpel-Lafond, who is of Cree and Scottish descent, will be responsible for ensuring residential school survivors and their family members have access to the testimonies and evidence gathered from the West Coast during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Centre will also provide a space for survivors not ready to testify during the commission to have their experiences documented and stored for future generations if they choose.

But the role of director is also active in ending the impacts of the schools on the lives of Indigenous families and children, she said.

“The legacy didn’t end when those who attended the schools left,” she said. “It affected partners, children, grandchildren, extended families. And of course has had a really deep impact on issues in the child welfare system.”

In Canada an estimated 52 per cent of children in government care are Indigenous, despite making up less than 10 per cent of children in the country. That ratio is even higher in B.C. where only nine per cent of all kids are Indigenous, but 63.8 per cent of the kids in care are Indigenous.

Part of Turpel-Lafond’s role as director includes ensuring the Dialogue Centre is active in the talks required to achieve the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The first five Calls are directly related to child welfare reforms, and coincide with much of what Turpel-Lafond recommended the province do in her role as Representative for Children and Youth.

“The opportunity to continue that work around the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, especially the first five calls on improving the situation of the child welfare system, that appealed to me,” she said.

Turpel-Lafond started her role as law professor on March 23 but won’t officially assume the director position until June 1.