Child death warnings ignored: former ombudsman

A former B.C. ombudsman says she tried to warn Premier Gordon Campbell as recently as May of this year that child deaths were not being properly reviewed.

Campbell and Solicitor General John Les have said they were shocked to learn 713 child deaths were not investigated following the decision to shut down the B.C. Children's Commission in 2002.

• FROM NOV. 17, 2005: More than 700 children's deaths not reviewed

But Dulcie McCallum says the government shouldn't be surprised that hundreds of child deaths were not reviewed. She says that message was being conveyed to senior government officials over a period of 18 months.

"We had been trying to talk to the premier and others about this issue, because no one knew what was happening about things that would otherwise have gone to the Children's Commissioner."

And she says she had almost been expecting the news that hundreds of children's deaths were not investigated.

"I wasn't surprised that this work simply hadn't been done, because nobody had the capacity."

• LINK: Coroners service breakdown of the numbers

McCallum says both she and former Children's Commissioner Cynthia Morton told government officials they were getting calls from people whose complaints about child deaths were not being responded to.

But McCallum says all her attempts to warn the government in writing were ignored, and that Campbell didn't even respond to her letters.

She also says it makes little sense to launch another study about child deaths in B.C., since that has already been done by the Gove Report following the death of Matthew Vaudreuil more than 10 years ago.

• LINK: Executive summary of 1995 Gove report

It was the recommendations from the Gove Report that led to the establishment of the Children's Commissioner by the former NDP government.