Manitoba's NDP government plans to introduce amendments to the Child and Family Services Act next month to ensure the safety of children is the child-welfare system's top priority.

The current act talks about a child's "best interest," but it does not specifically reference safety, Family Services Minister Gord Mackintosh says, and that aspect may be overlooked when child-welfare workers are assessing a situation.

"There are many, many important considerations when you consider a child's best interest," he said. "Culture is one, family reunification, family stability — there can be many considerations — but nothing should overcome the basic right to safety and security."

The legislative amendment should leave no confusion for anyone when it comes to the first priority of children in care, Mackintosh said.

"As was originally intended and, indeed, as the grand chiefs and the president of the Manitoba Métis Federation said when we put together devolution, safety is job one," he said.

"We're going to reinforce that. We're going to send a message, so there is no clutter in the way of people, right to the front line, receiving that message."

Insult to devolution process

Starting in 2003, Manitoba's child-welfare agencies underwent a "devolution" process that split family services into four new authorities — one each for aboriginal children in northern and southern areas of the province, one for Métis children, and a general authority for all others.

The change was aimed at creating a system in which First Nations people control the delivery of their own family services and intended to help more kids remain with their families.

Aboriginal children are over-represented in Manitoba's child-welfare system, with statistics suggesting as many as 70 per cent of children in care are aboriginal kids, although they make up only about 20 per cent of the province's child population.

Adding the word "safety" to the child-protection act is an insult to the devolution of child-welfare services to aboriginal agencies, according to Leslie Spillet of Ka Ni Kanichihk, an aboriginal service organization.

"There is that notion that there's a mutually exclusive dynamic going on here," she said. "It's either children's safety in white homes … or children being placed in aboriginal homes and not being safe and not being well cared for."

Safety should be a priority, Spillet said, but one element of safety is having children live in "culturally appropriate" homes.

The government could best ensure the safety of children by making sure they do not live in poverty, she said.

Several child deaths

The proposed legislative amendment was prompted by investigations into recent deaths of children in the child-welfare system.

Earlier this month, a report examining the inquest into the suicide of Tracia Owens criticized the system, which moved the 14-year-old more than 65 times through a variety of foster homes, group homes, a drug-treatment facility and her parents' home on the Little Grand Rapids First Nation.

"The child's safety and her best interests were not paramount," Mackintosh admitted Friday.

Another case saw toddler Gage Guimond transferred from a foster family to a grandmother to a distant relative, Shirley Guimond, who is now charged with manslaughter in the two-year-old's death.

A third high-profile case involved the death of five-year-old Phoenix Sinclair, who police believe was abused and killed in June 2005, three months after Child and Family Services returned the young girl to the custody of her birth mother and closed her case.

The girl had been missing for nine months before her remains were found in April 2006 on the Fisher River First Nation, but her disappearance was not reported to authorities until police received a tip in March.

Sinclair's birth mother, Samantha Kematch, and Kematch's boyfriend at the time, Karl Wesley McKay, have been charged with first-degree murder in that case.