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.