Good morning. Let us pray.

Prayers.

Resuming the debate adjourned on April 22, 2024, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 188, An Act to amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 and various other Acts / Projet de loi 188, Loi modifiant la Loi de 2017 sur les services à l’enfance, à la jeunesse et à la famille et diverses autres lois.

I’ll begin with a brief reflection on how this ended yesterday. This was a very emotional debate for me. I did not want to draw attention to myself in debate, but the issue of child protection is an urgent one.

I want to reiterate my thanks to the great Cindy Blackstock from the First Nations Caring society and Irwin Elman, who served the province with distinction for many years, for providing with me with the information to know my province a little bit better and to know my city of Ottawa a little bit better.

We all have those moments, I think, in this place where we reckon with the fact that the decisions we make have incredible gravity, particularly for people at risk.

I also want to note for the record a remarkable story running today in the Ottawa Citizen. It talks about the fact that thanks to a precedent in law known as the Gladue precedent, there’s a young man—young; the gentleman is 46 years of age—who has remade his life. Randy Kakegamick has remade his life thanks to a Gladue ruling. A Gladue ruling, if you’re not familiar, Speaker, is a way for Indigenous people who are caught up in our incarceration system as a result of lived trauma and behaviours negative to themselves and to the community—they’re given a new chance on life. I want to salute Sofia Donato and Ali Adwan, two Carleton University journalism students who wrote about Randy’s life and who suggest to us that there’s a different way for us to reorient our child protection system so people are given the opportunities that we all deserve. I’m mindful of the fact, too, as I say that, that this, particularly, is a matter that the member for Kiiwetinoong has brought into this House a number of times—the fact that there remains a double standard in the funding of child welfare agencies. Child welfare agencies, particularly as they function on-reserve, represent the latest form of colonialism that we have to reckon with, the fact that there are many children right now, as I speak these words, who are not being given the opportunities that many of us take for granted in our society.

I also want to say that, insofar as this bill is a step towards allowing people who have interacted with child protection to speak their truth, I want to salute the government for that; I want to salute the minister responsible for that.

I want to salute, in particular, Jane, working as Minster Parsa’s chief of staff, who herself, through lived experience, has walked this road and has decided to take the power available to her to push rights for people who have interacted with child protection and to have those stories guide our decisions. I think that’s a remarkable choice. I think it’s a terrific choice.

What I would implore this government to reckon with is the fact that Ontario, as a jurisdiction in our country, still ranks last on a per capita basis in how much we fund the children’s aid societies and child protection services; that we still are not doing enough to help, particularly, kids with disabilities, kids who interact with the criminal justice system, kids with violent behaviours, kids who come from families inherent with violence, who fall into a different category that is too often forgotten.

I’ll end—again, with the benefit of a little bit of time, and less charged with the emotion I had yesterday—to talk about David Roman, who we lost on February 19, 2019, when his life was taken by another youth at a Barrie for-profit group home. I want to reflect on the tragedy of not just David and the loss of David’s life; I want to reflect on the fact that Jordan Calver, the 23-year-old foster person assigned to that home, was given absolutely inadequate training to manage the behaviours in this group home.

Speaker, if you can believe it, Mr. Calver was hired over coffee in Barrie, was promised that all of the youth who were going to be admitted into this group home would not be exhibiting untoward, extremely violent behaviours. And that is absolutely not what happened.

David Roman’s parents are suing those responsible. Mr. Calver has a lawsuit before the province because of what he was put through. But none of that will ever bring David back. I salute anyone’s opportunity to find redress in court if they have been harmed. But none of it will bring David back.

What would bring people who are walking in David’s shoes right now—keep them in our province and keep them safe, is more funding towards non-profit, properly resourced child protection workers and real homes.

The foster families that exist all over this province, who do great good every single day—those homes deserve to have the resources they need. I believe every single person who puts themself forward to welcome someone into their home, to include them in their family, to give them a second shot at life, as one of the members said in debate yesterday afternoon from his experience—these are people performing some of the most exceptional modes of citizenship I can think about.

But I feel we are failing, quite frankly—and it has been remarkable for me to discover in debate—particularly Indigenous youth, Indigenous families, but also those who are put into situations that are unnecessarily harmful and violent.

So while I salute the government’s work to make sure people who have interacted with child protection can tell their stories, and I salute, in particular, those like Jane inside the minister’s office who have driven that change, I want to make sure that the province is putting the resources necessary to make sure we do not have tragedies continue in our child protection system.

I thank you for the opportunity to participate in the debate.

Of course, we support, on this side of the House, more accountability and serious consequences for people who would harm children in our child protection system.

But I would invite a response from any of the members opposite, in this opportunity for debate: Why is it that we have a for-profit motivation in the child protection system? That is the question I’ve heard the member from Kiiwetinoong ask—and the member from Windsor West, and the member for Hamilton Mountain.

I believe, frankly, we are setting ourselves up for more tragedies if we allow for-profit operators to shortchange children, to harm children. And we now have incredible amounts of disturbing evidence that suggests it’s continuing to happen.

While I agree with the member’s question and I agree with what he’s seeking to do, if we don’t change the motivation of some of these homes in the system, we’re going to have more problems, and I invite reflection on that now.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa Centre for that passionate speech. You shared your personal story, and you also shared your friend’s story with us yesterday. Thank you for that.

This bill, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act, 2024, is all about protecting the children and youth in our great province. I know we not only have a legal responsibility; we have a moral responsibility to protect children and youth in our custody.

My question to the member—the higher rate of compliance would mean that young people in out-of-home care receive a consistently higher quality of care that is safe, supportive and responsive to their needs. Does the member opposite support stronger oversight and accountability for those providing care for Ontario’s most vulnerable young people in this province?

I’d like to ask my friend from Ottawa Centre what is really missing in this act. There are so many things that could have been done to make life better in Ottawa Centre and across Ontario. What’s really missing that could have been addressed in this plan?

Thank you to the member for Ottawa Centre for your presentation. I want to raise some concerns that the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies raised. They talked about how, while this bill does something to improve people while they are in care, there’s nothing in the bill that addresses why children end up in care in the first place.

Can you speak to what you’ve heard from stakeholders or from your own experience in your riding about what we can do keep kids safe and loved in their families, in their homes?

It’s a pleasure to speak to Bill 188, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act.

It’s always hard to follow my colleague from Ottawa Centre, and I’m sorry that I missed his debate yesterday.

I want to start with a little story. My dad worked with the Family Court in Ottawa in the 1960s, when I was growing up. He was what they called a probation officer. He was involved a lot with children in care and families struggling and children in trouble with the law. When I was about two years old, my mom and my dad decided that they would take up residence—that they would be the residential caregivers—in what was called the juvenile detention centre, which is now Eugene Forsey Park on Bronson Avenue. So I always like to say I was in the youth detention centre when I was two.

I remember the stories that my dad told me about the children in care and children who had run into trouble because they had no parent, they had no guardian. They were on their own, and they were at risk. When he talked about his career—he worked in criminal justice and parole—he spoke very fondly of the work that he did with families then and with children without parents, wards of the crown, and how important that work was. It was formative for me in understanding that there were children in the world who didn’t have parents like I did, didn’t have a family like I did. I was very lucky. In coming here, I keep that in my mind.

This bill is a good bill. I commend the minister for bringing it forward. Everything in here is supportable. I do want to raise a couple of things, though, that I think are important for us to remember.

First of all, my colleague from Ottawa Centre mentioned for-profit homes and for-profit agencies operating in this sphere.

We’ve had an experience with increasing regulations and laws and fines around long-term care—for-profit long-term care and not-for-profit. And we’ve seen what our experience is when we impose higher fines, when we impose stiffer penalties. They’re often not enforced. And that’s not just—I’m not saying about the other side; I’m saying about all of us, about governments of all stripes.

We put forward these things that are a signal of our intent as to how important the care of a child who is in care, or a mom and dad who are in care in a long-term-care home—we put these things forward, and they’re important; they’re an expression of how strongly we believe people need to be treated. The problem is on the enforcement end—and again, this is all of us, all governments. We don’t do the job. It doesn’t get done. I’m not saying they’re empty promises because it’s a desire that we have to do the right thing, but we don’t go far enough. And then the next problem with the enforcement is, we don’t put enough to prevent the things that we’re not enforcing; we don’t put enough resources towards it.

My colleague from Ottawa Centre, again, mentioned that social workers in the not-for-profit and public sector are not paid very well. This is really important work. These children in care are at great risk, and all of us here are responsible for them. We make the laws. We fund the services. We’re all responsible for them. So we all need to do a better job, and the government of the day, right now, has to say, “We put these things forward. We’re going to make sure that they work. We’re going to make sure that there’s enough there to stop the situations” like my colleague from Ottawa Centre mentioned that happened, that are so tragic. It’s really important that we do it.

The second thing I want to mention, because I think this is really important, is that in 2007, the province of Ontario established the office of the child advocate. When you hear “child advocate,” you think they are advocating for all children. Well, yes. But do you know who they were really there for? They were really there for children who didn’t have anyone else to speak for them; children who didn’t have anyone else. That’s what the office of the independent child advocate did. The government at the time thought it was wise to axe the child advocate.

Interjection.

The next question?

Thank you to the member opposite for his statement this morning.

Yesterday afternoon, we heard in the Legislature from the member for Hamilton Mountain, who said that this legislation has taken a number of steps in the right direction, that this area has been neglected for years, and that we are doing good things in the legislation.

With that, I want to ask if you thought new enforcement tools proposed in the bill and more information about the track record of service providers with a history of non-compliance posted on the government’s website is a good step in the right direction, if you would support that, and if you want to tell us about any other parts of the bill that you think are worth supporting and a step in the right direction.

Good morning, Madam Speaker. It’s great to see you this morning.

Thank you to the member opposite for the speech earlier today.

My question is around some professionals in Ontario—teachers, physicians, social workers—who have an ongoing duty to directly report a child suspected to be in need of protection, which includes children who may have been harmed or neglected by their parents or caregiver. This bill proposes adding early childhood educators to that list of professions that should be reporting this when they suspect it. Does the member agree with that, and is that a good change being put forward?

First of all, I want to thank my colleague for his words, and I also want to thank him for pointing out that for-profit has no place in the child welfare system. It’s a poor motive for providing the really important help.

I’d just like to mention Feathers of Hope, a program that Irwin Elman had in northwestern Ontario. This was where Indigenous kids who had been in care had a safe place to come together and talk with each other, and they also presented to the leadership of the community and told us their stories. It was extremely important.

Can you tell us anything else that a child welfare advocate would bring if we were to have that position again?

Further questions?

Yesterday, I spoke about Amy Owen, who took her own life on April 17, 2017, in an Ottawa group home. She was relocated from her home at Poplar Hill First Nation. When I think about what could have been added to this bill to give Amy a shred of hope—it was services, it was support. She begged for help repeatedly. That’s what the APTN investigative journalism has uncovered in Amy’s tragic story. She begged repeatedly for help, but we were not there to help her.

I want to reflect on the fact that it is 2024 and we have a child protection system that continues to fail kids—particularly Indigenous kids—in need.

To the member’s question: We need to stop failing those children, and we need to make sure there are preventive resources ahead of time, so every community in this province has the capacity for people to heal. More punitive measures are not going to solve that problem.

When I consider what Cindy Blackstock has said about this from an Indigenous perspective, it involves us doing right by our reconciliation treaty obligations. We’re failing those, too. Insofar as there are purposeful measures done by the federal government to this day that continue to underfund child protection in communities and allow people opportunities to heal—I believe that is a major failure that not only our province but the federal government has to share.

I would also say that in a context where one out of every seven kids is going to school hungry; in a context where so many people, as the member knows very well because she has spoken about it many times, cannot find housing, particularly supportive housing to go to when you’re trying to flee a context of violence—that is also a situation in which our housing policy impacts our ability to help children who are most vulnerable.

We need to do a lot more to make sure people can feel safe.

One of the things that I particularly support in this bill, given the work that was done by the chief of staff to the minister from lived experience, is the fact that folks who have interacted with the child protection system can now feel absolutely no penalty to speak their truth. It’s remarkable, when you think about it from a legal perspective, that we’re asking people who have interacted with the child protection system to sign away their charter rights of expression. That is a remarkable thing, and I commend the minister and I commend this bill and I commend his chief of staff for bringing that forward, because it was unconscionable that that was allowed to happen in this province.

Do I support harsher penalties and more oversight of agencies falling afoul of our rules and regulations? Absolutely. But what I would like—listening to the advice I’ve received for the debate—is for us to be harder on the preventive end. When I heard the member for Kitchener Centre, who worked as a social worker before she came into this place, that’s what she said—she said that social workers are leaving the child protection system on the non-profit and public side because of what they’re seeing and because of the lack of compensation and support.

So there’s a lot we can do on the preventive side, in my opinion—to answer the member’s question—to make sure that those tragedies don’t happen and to make sure that people don’t fall down the hole of neglect that, sadly, exists in our child protection system.

Sometimes we can be penny-wise and pound foolish in politics. Sometimes we can think we are saving money on the front end, but we don’t realize all the things we are losing as a consequence of eliminating the office of the child advocate, which we have done.

So while I am happy with a lot of the thrust of this bill and what it does positively to make sure that the resources are given to the youth who need the help, bringing back the office of the child advocate and bringing resources right to the community so youth could speak their own truth to heal is critically important.

I thank you for the question.

I’m pleased to rise and ask a question of the member of Ottawa South.

One of the features of this legislation is that it creates new tools to ensure compliance, which will apply in every licensed out-of-home care setting. The new tools include orders to return funds, administrative monetary penalties and increased fines to ensure that it simply will not be possible to make a profit by providing poor care to children.

To my question, though, to the member from Ottawa South—Bill 188 proposes to entrench rights for youth overall. How are they doing that—the past relied on the Ombudsman Act. This particular legislation now would put that right within the Child, Youth and Family Services Act to remove any lack of clarity on the rights youth have with respect to the Ombudsman—

You’ve been here long enough to know that.

Please direct your comments through the Chair.

Well, I’m sure. I guess you can probably give the Premier a call and ask him about that, because that’s what happened. They axed it.

Interjections.

I know it’s hard to hear, folks, but there’s a remedy. You can fix it. It’s not broken forever. Here’s the reality: We don’t like criticism. I don’t like the criticism I’m hearing right now. Nobody likes to be criticized. No one likes somebody shining a light on us coming up short. But do you want to know what, folks? All governments are going to come up short when it comes to this. We’ll never do enough, ever, ever, ever.

So we need people like an independent child advocate to speak up for children who don’t have a voice, and that’s their only job—not the rest of government. And kudos to the Ombudsman’s office for taking it on, but we need somebody whose job it is just to do that, nothing else. That’s why it was established. That’s why it was important. And that’s why it would be a really good thing, as my colleague from Ottawa Centre said, to re-establish an independent child advocate. I think we could all agree on it. Yes, we’re going to hear some things we don’t want to hear. We’re going to hear some things that will make us uncomfortable—not just the government, but all of us. We need that. We need that because those children don’t have a voice.

The measures in this bill to make sure that children have the language of their choice in terms of being communicated to—that’s great. That’s really important. But what about hearing their voice? How do we hear their voice? We only will be able to hear their voice if we actually are intentional about ensuring that they have one, and that they have an independent one, and it’s one that reports to all of us.

I think what happened with axing the Child Advocate was something that was done in haste. You got rid of the Environmental Commissioner and anyone else who, at the time, would say something that would tell the government what they didn’t really want to hear or anybody else to hear.

It’s healthy to have critics. It’s healthy to have people who shine a light on things. It only makes us better.

I am going to support this bill. We’re going to support it. It’s a good bill.

Two things that the government needs to remember: All these new penalties, all these new laws don’t mean anything if we don’t enforce it, if we don’t put money behind it, if we don’t put money behind preventing the things that are happening from happening, if we don’t pay social workers enough, if we don’t ensure that there’s enough support—I don’t want to use the word “supervision.” We don’t supervise our children growing up, as parents. I don’t know what the right word to use is. Here’s the reality: Children in care—we’re their parents. We’re responsible for them. So if we’re going to put this law forward, we better put something behind it, all of us.

Number two: Children in care across this province need an independent voice. They need an independent child advocate because they don’t have a voice. I shouldn’t say they don’t have a voice. They have a voice, but they’re not heard. They need somebody whose only job is to say, “Here’s what’s happening over here. Here’s what’s happening to kids who are in our care. And here’s what needs to be done.” We may not like what they say. We may not like what we see. But it will only work if we force ourselves to listen and see those things that need to be fixed, even though they make us feel uncomfortable and coming up short.

I’m happy to take any questions.

I’d like to commend your parents for what they did. It’s wonderful to hear something like that.

This bill proposes a modern and flexible suite of tools that will empower the ministry inspectors to improve compliance rates among licensed providers of out-of-home care to children and youth. A high rate of compliance would mean that young people in out-of-home care receive a consistent, high quality of care that is safe, supportive and responsive to their needs.

Does the member opposite support stronger oversight and accountability for those providing care for Ontario’s most vulnerable young people?

To my friend from Ottawa South, thank you for the remarks.

I’m wondering if, in this question and answer, we can brainstorm about other ways in which we can encourage people to become foster families, to encourage the creation of non-profit, safe homes for kids interacting with the child protection system.

Just as a thought exercise, I think about our great pension plans that exist in the province of Ontario and the fact that they need more contributors to survive, and that these huge pension plans—be they OMERS or HOOPP or teachers—need more contributors. So instead of having a for-profit element to the child protection system and thinking of incentivizing people to get involved on the basis of a money-making enterprise, what if we told foster families that they could be part of an established pension and benefits program maintained by the province of Ontario? What if we brought that to Indigenous communities so people who made that sacrifice of opening up their family homes could enjoy a dignified retirement, thanks to their service, and the province had their back? That’s a way in which we can reward people who do this kind of caring profession. I’m wondering what the member thought.

Thank you to the member from Ottawa South for his comments.

I appreciate the fact that you said it’s a good bill and you’ll be supporting the bill. We don’t have enough of the support that I would like to see coming from the other side of the Legislature on some of our bills, so I’m glad you like this one and you’re going to work with us.

In that regard, I think that the bill proposes a number of things that are very useful. One is that any appeals of the Licence Appeal Tribunal to the Divisional Court will not automatically result in a stay of decision. The Divisional Court would need to be satisfied that a stay would not pose a risk to the health, safety and welfare of a child. I would imagine the member agrees that the welfare of children and youth must always come first when considering matters of administrative fairness for service providers. I know you said that the money has to be there to make this a reality. But I do think some of these changes, like this one, can also make things better. That’s what we do here in the Legislature—improve the legislation. Would you agree?

Response?