Alberta's child advocate says annual reports will be filed on time in future

John Mould came under fire in the provincial legislature earlier this week when the opposition NDP pointed out there was a three-year lapse in the annual reports from his office.

There were calls for the resignation of Child and Youth Services Minister Janice Tarchuk after she tabled three of Mould's reports in the legislature, all at once, on the same day as the federal election.

In an interview Friday, Mould said he chose to focus his office's resources on advocating for children in the province's care.

"I miscalculated the consequence of not doing the reports annually," he said. "Of course it is a problem. It has created a problem for the minister that I regret and ... it was never my intention to create a situation like this."

The annual reports - and more detailed quarterly reports that the NDP was able to get under freedom of information laws - outline problems with some of the roughly 9,000 children in the province's care.

Those problems include use of face-down restraints and allegations of peer-to-peer sexual abuse in which the victim and the abuser remained in the same placement.

In a 2006 quarterly report, there was a suggestion that children were being put at risk by being placed in homes where there were "youth with sexually acting-out behaviours."

The Speaker's office and the clerk of the assembly have said that the annual reports are not only required each year, but late reports can trigger an investigation.

But Premier Ed Stelmach has rebuffed opposition calls for Tarchuk's resignation, telling the legislature that there were few people in Alberta who have her level of compassion regarding children's issues.