Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to make my first questions today to the Minister of Health and Social Services on child and family services. What has happened in the past is we have had a number of audits from the Auditor General which were scathing of the treatment of children in care. There is no issue that requires greater oversight and accountability than when the state takes a person's child.
My concern is that what happens in this Assembly is at times we get the reports and a lot of noise is made, and then there is some media, and then it falls off, often between audits or between election cycles. My first question to the Minister is: can you provide an update on where we are in responding to the last report on the Auditor General in regards to child and family services? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was just advised by my Premier that the Cabinet committee for the Premier will come up with a Cabinet committee for child and families right after the Christmas break.
The Department of Health and Social Services presently has a quality improvement progress tracker that allows you to see a number of the tasks and responses to the audit. I commend the department for creating this tracker. It really should be how all of our actions are measured and available to the public.
However, I think there is a larger question. The audit is largely of whether we are complying with our own policies, which is step one. It is not always whether those are the right policies. My question to the Minister though is: does the Minister know if the work for a third audit has begun?
The Auditor General of Canada is not currently conducting a third audit of the child and family services system. If the Auditor General called for another review of the child and family services system, the Department would fully engage and integrate the findings as part of our continuous improvement framework.
I want to assure the Member that we take the review of quality seriously. That is why we have our own separate quality review and internal audit process. This quality review process is ongoing, and we have started our internal audits. We anticipate that the internal audits will be done by the spring of 2020.
I believe that it is important that we are doing our own internal audits as well as a much longer discussion which I hope is brought to Committee, of whether not only are we complying with our own policies but whether they are the correct policies that ultimately will lower the number of children in care.
My question to the Minister is whether those internal audits will be shared with Members and brought to Committee.
Just in reference back to the actual Auditor General's report, the Department has accepted the recommendations. The plan was publicized and released in August of 2019. To date, approximately 33 percent of the action plan, action items in the quality improvement plan, have been completed.
The time for oral questions has expired, but I will allow the Member to ask his remaining supplemental question. The Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure that I got a reply there on whether the internal audits would be shared with Committee. My question to the Minister is: can you provide a timeline on when those internal audits will be done, and what is the process in responding to our own internal audits that is planned?
I will work with the Member to ensure I get him the dates and the release of the information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The time has expired for oral questions. With the number of questions we have had, good discussion. We will take a short recess. Thank you.
---SHORT RECESS
