Preventing the use of social circumstances including poverty as a reason for taking a child from its parents.

Tuesday November 6th, I spoke in the Manitoba Legislature on Bill 223, the Child and Family Services Amendment Act. This bill will ensure that no child will be taken into care solely as a result of the economic or social situation of the child's parent or guardian. My comments are below:

Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Point Douglas (Mrs. Smith) for bringing this forward. It is an important bill. When I was first elected in 1999, I was told that about a third of the children taken from families didn't need to be in care because it was just an issue of social circumstances and poverty that could've been helped.

Over the last 19 years it was very frustrating that this was never adequately addressed and so that we ended up with about 11,000 kids in care, and probably about 85 per cent of them on the basis of neglect, and many of those due to social and economic circumstances.

There needs to be, clearly, from the government's side, a plan to support families who are in difficult economic and social circumstances, so that when you have a child not coming into care, there needs to be an alternative that needs to be vigorous and strong.

I thank the member for Point Douglas and hope that we can pass this through.

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Comparison between Manitoba and South Dakota shows dramatic impact of Physical Distancing

Manitoba implemented physical distancing measures in mid-March. South Dakota has still not made physical distancing mandatory. The result is a dramatic difference in the incidence of covid-19 viral infections between the two jurisdictions. This graph shows the number of people with Covid-19 infections from March 27 to April 14. Manitoba ( red line ) started leveling off about April 4 and has seen only a small increase in Covid-19 infections since then. South Dakota ( blue line ) has seen a dramatic increase in Covid-19 infections since April 4. Those who are skeptical of the impact of physical distancing in Manitoba should look at this graph! Data are from the Johns Hopkins daily tabulations

Pushing for safe consumption sites and safe supply to reduce overdose deaths

On Monday June 20th, Thomas Linner of the Manitoba Health Coalition, Arlene Last-Kolb Regional Director of Moms Stop the Harm and Winnipeg City Councillor Sherri Rollins were at the Manitoba Legislature to advocate for better measures to reduce deaths from drug overdoses, most particularly for safe consumption sites and for a safe supply, measures which can reduce overdose deaths.

Dougald Lamont speaks out strongly against the "reprehensible", "legally and morally indefensible" Bill 2

Early in the morning, just after 3 am, on November 6th, Dougald Lamont spoke at third reading of Bill 2, the Budget Implementation and Statutes Amendment Act. He spoke strongly against the bill because it attempts to legitimize a historic injustice against children in the care of child and family services. As Dougald says this bill is " the betrayal of children, First Nations and the people of this province. " Mr. Dougald Lamont (St. Boniface): These are historic times. This is an historic budget, for all the wrong reasons. I was thinking of the Premier's (Mr. Pallister) comments about D-Day today and my relatives who served in combat in the First and Second World War. I had a relative who played for the Blue Bombers and served at D-Day with the Winnipeg Rifles because he was an excellent athlete, he made it quite a long way up the beach. And had he lived until last year, he might have been one of the veterans the Premier insulted by not showing up at a

The Gerrard Report

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