Advocates are warning Manitoba’s most vulnerable children are being failed by a system meant to protect them – failures they say have been laid bare by recent deaths in the province. The last time Natalie Anderson said she saw Xavia Butler alive was when she was nine-months old. “Her eyes used to smile when she was with me.
She knew what love was. She was very loved,” Anderson told CTV News in an interview last week. Anderson said she raised Xavia from birth for the first nine months of her life through an informal kinship agreement with the baby’s biological mother.
“She was a beautiful, innocent, amazing child. She was very smart,” Anderson said. Natalie Anderson with Xavia in an undated photo.
Uploaded Nov. 1, 2024. (Natalie Anderson/Facebook) Butler’s remains were discovered in a barn near Gypsumville this summer.
Manitoba RCMP are investigating her death as a homicide, but told CTV News there was no CFS involvement in her case at the time of her death. They would not comment further. Xavia’s death is one of several recent child deaths in the province raising alarms.
“In Manitoba, it’s every child matters unless you’re in Manitoba foster care,” said Brittany Bannerman, a foster parent with the Manitoba Foster Parent Association. Bannerman has been calling for change in the child and family services (CFS) system – a system with nearly 9,000 children in care as of last year, 91 per cent of whom are Indigenous. “We are watching kids that are fac.
