I want to thank the member from Hamilton Mountain for her debate on Bill 188, Supporting Children’s Futures Act, 2024.

It’s no secret that these private, for-profit group homes call their clients, the children in their care, cash cows. That is, quite frankly, revealing of what kind of intention there is when businesses are actually caring for children—it’s a business.

One of the examples I want to bring forward is Expanding Horizons. Back in 2021, the company’s legal counsel surrendered its law licence to the Law Society of Ontario after admitting to a tribunal in 2018 they had misappropriated nearly $500,000 from clients.

How can strengthening the oversight in a non-profit system for group homes help this kind of financial abuse be stopped?

I first want to thank the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington for sharing his experience of when he was a youth growing up in his family, and I think what I got from that, and many of us over time, is that everyone of us has a story of where we come from, our challenges, our successes. And I congratulate you that your father did overcome his challenges of alcoholism and was able to repair a relationship in your youth, because it’s so important, those bonds that children develop with parents.

I’ve talked in the House about my family experience. My parents came here from Portugal. I was born in Portugal. They came here when I was six years old, with five kids, five children: three brothers and my sister and myself. One of the things that my dad wanted to come to Canada for, first of all, was because my mom was very, very, very ill, and her mother had the same illness, and he wanted to seek treatment for my mom. So as a young child, I never really had my mother as a role model, but she was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest person that could you ever meet.

Now, saying that, the roles in our family were vastly different from what we were used to culturally, because, coming from Portugal, there are set roles in that culture. So my dad, God rest his soul, he was an amazing individual, as my mom was. She was an incredible person, but my father stepped up to the role of being the mother and the father, the provider, the caretaker, the whole gamut. What is so awesome about that particular experience, from my perspective, is that, in my culture, that is not normally—that a father would take that role on. And so, he was obviously so adaptable to making sure our family stayed together, because it’s so easy that a family could fall through the cracks, and that’s, I think, what I’m trying to express.

So, while we were in Canada, my brother Steve was born, so there was number four, four brothers and one sister and myself, so we ended up to be six. When my mother was gravely ill, for decades, quite frankly, my sister, Nelia, she was the older sister of the two of us, by two years, and so, because of her ranking, her position in the family, she, again, was kind of selected to be the mother, the head of the household, literally at eight years old, because when we came here, as I said, my mother was sick. She became the person who translated for my father, took my mother to medical appointments. As a young girl, as she was older, if the principal called, she would be dealing with my brothers if there was a little bit of turmoil, which wasn’t at all a bad thing. But the nice part was we had a support system in the school. It was very, very comforting. We had a support system in the school.

The interesting part is my father never hid my mother’s illness. None of us ever hid my mother’s illness. There was nothing, really, to be ashamed of, and maybe that’s because of our ignorance; I don’t know. Or maybe we just loved our mother so much we felt that she should belong and we shouldn’t have any stigma because she’s our mother, regardless of what her situation was.

So, going to school, we had a lot of support. I’ll never forget my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bladek. She and Mrs. Weaver, they took me under their wing. Mrs. Bladek, in particular, knew our situation. I’m sure all the teachers did. If one did, I’m sure that they all talked about the situation. But she would come over to our home and have dinner with us, and she’d come over and give us Christmas presents. She’d socialize with us outside of school. She would take me to the local diner back then, when Simpsons had a lunch counter, and she would take me out for lunch when lunch hour was. You could you do that back then.

We were very fortunate, and I think that what I’m trying to illustrate here is that if we didn’t have the help—from our extended family, by the way. I have to thank my aunts and my uncles. They all knew about my mom’s situation. They all helped out, and my cousins. It was a very strange way to have an upbringing because, if I talk about the story, you’ll hear in my voice that it was a very positive experience that I had, but in a very odd circumstance, where your mother was ill for decades. But because of the people who were around us, helped us, didn’t see it as something to be ashamed of, something to be disgusted by—because my mother did have very, very frequently, daily, regularly, episodes that made it hard on all of us.

But again, the upbringing that I had, the people who were in my life—I’m so fortunate and grateful that they were there, because we as a family and each of my individual siblings—no one strayed, thank goodness. I listened to the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington, what happened with him and how he had to leave his home at 16. Depending on the situation, maybe I would have had to have left because of the conditions. But because of my father and my sister and my brothers, it was a good home. It was a stable home, and we all knew the predictability and what to expect. It was nothing tragic that traumatized me growing up, because I was raised with that illness, and the expectation to support each other was, I guess, an underlined, known, unspoken thing. So we did that.

But if that wasn’t the case, I reflect on the story I heard earlier from that member, that things could have gone sideways. My father could have turned to alcoholism. My father could have been an abusive person. I mean, he had six children; that’s stressful. He worked full time as a labourer and then had to come home and make dinner and account for all of us. So it was quite remarkable, I have to say, that we are not a story that we’re discussing today.

The bill does make some headway in ways. There’s strengthening in licensing. There’s strengthening inspectors. But one thing I should tell you I think should be in here is that the for-profit private group home piece should be removed, because I think that goes a long way. We had some history; we all know what the history is of these group homes, and I’ll talk about something that’s current in my riding in a short piece. But the history that has happened, all the cases that have come forward in the media: Those for-profit homes did not have the oversight required to protect our children.

This is part of the reason why I think we need to—it doesn’t matter what government, but there’s always the financial piece that we forget. And once there’s a private home or a private long-term-care home or a private child care or daycare centre, the oversight, the transparency and the accountability just isn’t there like if it was a non-profit-run organization. That, to me, is a very important piece that should be in here.

Like I say, this bill is supportable. There are lots of good things that are happening. But the history how we led up to here is really devastating. As everyone knows right now, back a few years ago—in 2012, actually—there was a class action lawsuit by crown wards because of the treatment from CAS, and so the government of Ontario agreed to a proposed settlement for all persons who were alive as of January 22, 2012, who were crown wards in Ontario at any time from the period on or after January 1, 1966, until March 30, 2017, and suffered physical or sexual assault before or while a crown ward, and the court approved a notice of settlement approving hearing available etc. So these things go back to 1966.

And do you know what? We’ve heard articles about calling these kids or clients, these residents, “cash cows.” When we’re talking about 1966, and still today we’re hearing horrible stories in the news about the Conner Homes, about Expanding Horizons, about the Johnson Children’s Services—these are for-profit homes who have really created these issues in their homes because they were worrying about the profit and not the service delivery, not looking after the best interests of the children. There were various other things, too, the government—which I’m surprised that we’re still talking about today: training and education for people who worked in these for-profit private homes.

Quite frankly, the Expanding Horizons home is one of the—they’re all horrific. But a young man, around 14 years old, David Roman, was murdered in that home. If that doesn’t move you to understand that this is not a business, this is not a for-profit enterprise, we need to really do some more digging in making changes to how we perceive and how we are setting policies when it comes to financial intent when it comes to our children.

And I can tell you what happened was that, because this went before the courts, the person who had the children in their home, they said that they did not have any training whatsoever. They were 24 years old, by the way, and I believe they had four high-risk residents. The person that was in charge of the home explained to Expanding Horizons that he didn’t have any training, had never had interaction with children, but that didn’t stop that business transaction from happening, and that is what the problem is, I think, when we talk about making things better, and we forget that it’s not a business. Human resources, human beings, are not businesses.

That leads me to talk about, in London—so this is a very recent article. I’m hoping I can get through it so I can actually talk about what currently happened yesterday.

This was on November 15, 2023. It’s an article written about the London CAS and that they’re saying that they currently have no beds available for some of the city’s most vulnerable youth. Because of pre-existing gaps in services, they’ve only grown wider and wider in the city and across the province, according to Gerry Healy, and there’s no space to place high-needs children who require special treatment and aren’t able to return home for a variety of reasons.

That’s the other thing: There’s a lot of high-needs children here whose parents cannot continue to care for, because the resources aren’t there for them to be supported at home. I actually talked to a family and the whole team at the time about how they adopted a child, a young girl. Now she’s 12 years old, and her behaviours have gotten so bad that they need help, and the children’s aid society is not able to place her because of her needs. This is another family who is in crisis, who can fall apart at any time. We don’t want children to be the victims or the outcome of the fact that we don’t have the right supports for these children. But what’s happening—that’s a high-risk situation. Again, they want to be placed, and CAS doesn’t have the capability of placing those children in specialized homes where people have that training.

But what is also happening here in London is—“‘When you’re putting a teenager or a child as young as 11 in hotel rooms and calling that home, I’d say [the situation] is significantly dire,’ said Healy.”

That’s what’s happening, like I say, in November 2023, and during the pandemic that was also happening. But what is more alarming, Speaker, is that it’s still happening today. Just yesterday, I was speaking to someone that I know, who’s very close to me, and their 15-year-old niece was in a London hotel room through the custody being in CAS. This is a huge, huge inadequacy and can lead to so many problems.

One of the things in the article—and I’m sure we can all connect the dots when it comes to a young person in a hotel room, isolated from connecting with other people—you’ve got social media. The 401 is on the hub of human trafficking, because there are so many hotels on the highway. So, of course, you’ve got these youth, very impressionable, come from a family—in her case, her parents, unfortunately, are addicts, and they can’t place her. And the other thing is they separated her from her younger siblings, which is very traumatic for her. This is a story that continues to happen.

One of the things that CAS had said is that they’re on the verge of filing bankruptcy because they have such high deficits. And I know government had at one time bailed out or funded those deficits, but we need to make sure that we actually provide the funds to the CASs that are supposed to be in charge or overseeing our children. Bills like this are a good step, but if the mechanisms and the instruments are not in place to actually deliver what this bill promises, then really, we’re not doing anything. It’s not justice for our children. We’re not giving them the opportunity to thrive. We’re not giving them the opportunity to live in a safe home and access all the basic needs that they have.

One of the things that this person told me that their niece was experiencing was a lack of food, believe it or not. So at one point, they were in school and they fainted because they didn’t get anything to eat. A growing teenager—this is not the kind of nourishment that we should be offering, having a granola bar for breakfast. When her parents were in a bad way, they left the home for a month. and nobody found out. Do you know how they found out that she was the one that was looking after her younger siblings? It was because she was actually stealing snacks from school and bringing them home so that the children could have something to eat. This is a true story, and it’s not exaggerated. I don’t like exaggerating. People who know me here—I don’t make things up to get attention. This actually is from someone who I know, very close to me, telling me what they’re experiencing now.

So I really implore the government, maybe in committee, that when you’re in committee, really think about making sure that all these rules have a purpose, all these rules will actually mean something and create the outcomes that we need. Because we can create all the rules we want, but when we have a system that isn’t transparent, that isn’t accountable and that doesn’t have the right oversight, we’re failing the children that we are protecting.

There are inspections here, which great, they’re on site; you don’t have to call anymore. There are fines of $250,000 and a year in jail. But that isn’t going to help the victims. That isn’t going to help the children that were offended, that were taken advantage of by those people that work there or by those operators. That’s too late. So we need to make sure that when there’s the non-profit piece for our kids, they’re not a cheque for the care system. These are human beings. They’re the most vulnerable.

There is a piece in here now that they can go to the Ombudsman, but we have to remember the child advocate was really the strongest voice for our children in care. I understand that since the Ombudsman has taken over—I had down here that there were 200 complaints in one year as opposed to 2,000 when there was a child advocate. So it’s not getting out there, if a child needs to speak out on their behalf. And it shouldn’t be their responsibility, quite frankly. Imagine being a child, an eight- or nine-year-old, and you’re supposed to seek out where you’re going to report what’s happening to you. It’s good that the list has been expanded for reporting; that’s good. But again, there’s so many other things that need to be strengthened in this legislation.

I know that early childhood educators are one of the ones in here dedicated to report, and that’s really important because, again, they look after the youngest populations. That’s why it’s so important, when we are talking about child care in this province, that we respect the workers that work in those spaces. We want to make sure that there is that retention because continuity is how you catch some of these reports of abuse. It’s the continuity of care. You know, the same person, perhaps, is looking after that little child that comes in. But if you have an overturn on staff all the time, you’re going to miss those signs of what the child might be going through. So having a strong early childhood educator workforce is so important.

We have to make sure that we create it as a career and pay early childhood workers, registered ECEs and all staff a wage that makes them want to be in that career, and it’s not a revolving door for a step up to another job. I’ve advocated for that in this Legislature, and I’m going to bring a private member’s bill. I’m very passionate about that because we need, again, to look to the future, that if we’re building these child care spaces and we want to have early childhood educators understand and report, that we need to create the workforce. We need to have the training and the proper workforce environment to make sure that these professionals get the respect that they deserve, because we owe them that, because we owe it to our children, if we’re going to have people who are supposed to care for them, give them the best care.

We owe it to the children and we owe it to the workers to have the training and the education, and we need to make sure that these agencies are non-profit. It shouldn’t be a for-profit business; it should be a not-for-profit so we can have the proper care and oversight to look after our most vulnerable children.

Yes, absolutely. I think good policy in any ministry takes into account the people that it’s trying to make policies for. And when you’re trying to make policies for people with mental health, with addictions, when you’re trying to make policies for intimate partner violence, when you’re trying to make policies for children—our most vulnerable—absolutely, you need to listen to children.

Quite frankly, children are very smart. They’ll tell you the truth about everything and I think listening to children is a huge part of how we can actually make the system better, so that we can eliminate—hopefully, in the future—all those blemishes that they’ve experienced before we make things better in this bill.

Yes, this bill is supportable. There are some good things in there and it’s good to have, making sure that children have contributions into the care that they receive.

And those infractions, those types of horrible acts that happened in long-term care and the fact that this government waived their legal liability to be accountable for those acts is really awful. It’s despicable, quite frankly.

So in order to make sure that fines are enacted, they have to be enforced and they have to follow through. And I hope that the paper that this bill is written on isn’t just useless paper; it actually has some teeth and people will be charged. And these homes then will also be taken over by the government and given to someone else to manage instead.

I did read the sections of the bill, and there was one particular one which, again, is left up to the minister, where the minister has discretion in a certain section under 261.1 that isn’t subject to the tribunal—because again, there are parts in here where they can’t actually file an appeal if the infractions are so egregious. But it shouldn’t take infractions to be that egregious before things are revealed. Having inspections and compliance and that follow-through has to happen, as in long-term care. That’s what happened. All these inspections happened, compliance never really got followed through, and things got worse.

So yes, there are some strong pieces in here. I just hope that they’re actually used, and it’s not just on paper, black and white.

Mental health is a huge, huge problem in Ontario—quite frankly, in society—and we have to make sure that we actually put the resources in. We talk about upfront investment in mental health. There are wait-lists. Can you imagine? There are wait-lists for a child to get mental health services. And when you have services for children under 18, then they actually don’t transfer those services over to when they’re 18. Those things need to change. We need to make sure we look after our children so that as they age into adulthood, they become productive and healthy people in our society who can contribute in the way that they know best.

But again, I stress that they should not be private, for-profit facilities. These should all be non-profit, so that all monies go into the care of our children, and the responsibility and oversight is wide open so that if anything can happen, the government is prepared to deal with it on the spot.