Tansi Nîtôtemtik,
Photo by Peggy Lam for CBC. Image retrieved from <www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/tina-fontaine-cfs-review-1.4553147>.
In yesterday’s post, we considered the connections between MMIWG and child welfare. Today, we share with you the story of Tina Fontaine, a young Indigenous girl from Winnipeg who died in 2014. In many ways, the story of Tina’s life (and death) illustrates the close connection between Canada’s child welfare system and the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.[1]
Tina was born in 1999 in Winnipeg, Manitoba to a mother who was herself “still a child in government care.”[2] When she was five-years old, Tina moved in with her great-aunt, Thelma Favel, who fostered and raised her. Following her father’s homicide in 2011, Tina’s struggles to cope led her great-aunt to seek help from Manitoba Child and Family Services (CFS) who apprehended her into care in the spring of 2014. During her time with CFS, Tina “became the subject of multiple missing-person reports as she was passed back and forth between various child-welfare agencies.”[3] Tina was in the care of CFS when she disappeared in August 2014. On August 17, 2014, Tina’s body was pulled from Winnipeg’s Red River. She was 15 years old. This past August marked the fifth anniversary of her death, and her story remains one that needs to be told.
Tina’s Timeline
After a number of incidents in 2013 and early 2014, Tina was placed in CFS care in the spring of 2014. The CFS intake for Tina “documented numerous concerns, including Internet luring” and the fact that and that Tina’s biological mother “pose[d] [a] risk of sexually exploiting Tina.”[4]
In early July, Tina visited her biological mother in Powerview-Pine Falls and, after learning that Tina was using crack cocaine and being sexually exploited, her great-aunt contacted a CFS agency in Winnipeg. This led to a jurisdictional pile-up, in which three different CFS agencies attempted to determine who should take charge of Tina.[5]
On July 17, 2014, the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) responded to a call that Tina was “screaming for help as a man dragged her by the arm down the street.” Upon arrival, WPS found Tina and an 18-year old man, both intoxicated. Both were detained for public intoxication and Tina was later discharged to a CFS agency. However, “there were no emergency placements available, so CFS housed Tina at a downtown Winnipeg hotel.” [6] Over the course of the next week, “Tina went missing, stayed in a youth shelter, ran away, returned and then left the shelter again.”[7]
Tina was reported missing again in early August. It later became apparent that WPS failed to actively search for her in the days following. On August 8, at around 2 a.m. – a week after she was last seen – Tina arrived at a youth shelter. The youth shelter contacted a CFS after-hours unit, but “neither the shelter nor the after-hours unit were aware that Tina was the subject of a missing-persons report.” [8] Tina left the shelter at 3:30 a.m. and at 5:15 a.m., the police found her in the car of an intoxicated driver. The driver was taken into custody, but Tina was let go, despite the fact she was reported missing. A few hours later, Tina was found “unconscious and partially unclothed in a back alley near the University of Winnipeg.”[9] At the hospital, Tina told a CFS worker about a friend “whom she described as a 62-year-old methamphetamine user.” [10] This man turned out to be Raymond Cormier, who was later charged with her murder. Having denied that she was sexually exploited or assaulted, and after refusing an exam, Tina was cleared for discharge and was placed in a downtown hotel “under the supervision of a third-party worker.”[11] She left the hotel that evening, and did not return.
On August 17, police divers found her body in the Red River, and Raymond Cormier, whom Tina had contact with days before her death, was charged with second-degree murder, though he was subsequently acquitted by a jury in February 2018.[12] There have been no subsequent investigations or arrests relating to her death, nor any major changes in the CFS system.
What Tina’s Story Tells Us
Tina’s story is a stark representation of the problems inherent in Canada’s child welfare system and its treatment of Indigenous youth. In particular, her story shows a tangled web of mishandling and oversight by CFS, WPS, and social workers – a tangled web full of gaps which were all too easy for a lost, young girl to fall through. There were many opportunities for CFS and WPS to intervene. Instead, they passed over Tina time and time again, and the ultimate cost was her life.
Until next time,
Team ReconciliAction YEG
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[1] See Jillian Taylor, “‘Tina Fontaine is that direct link’ between MMIWG, child welfare system, advocate says at inquiry hearing”, CBC News (3 October 2018), online: <www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/mmiwg-national-inquiry-cindy-blackstock-winnipeg-1.4848538 > [perma.cc/P6GQ-GVV7].
[2] Canadian Press, “‘Nothing has changed’: Tina Fontaine’s body pulled from river five years ago”, APTN News (16 August 2019), online: <aptnnews.ca/2019/08/16/nothing-has-changed-tina-fontaines-body-pulled-from-river-five-years-ago/ > [perma.cc/U64X-TG9K].
[3] Kathryn Blaze Baum & Wendy Stueck, “Not in vain: How Tina Fontaine’s tragic story showed a way forward”, Globe and Mail (8 June 2019), online: <www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-not-in-vain-how-tina-fontaines-tragic-story-showed-a-way-forward/ > [perma.cc/W6M4-UYBN].
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Cameron MacLean, “Jury finds Raymond Cormier not guilty in death of Tina Fontaine”, CBC News (22 February 2018), online: <www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/jury-finds-raymond-cormier-not-guilty-in-death-of-tina-fontaine-1.4542319> [perma.cc/F4N6-TG5B].
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