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—

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?

Thank you to the member from Ottawa South.

I also want to thank the member from Ottawa Centre for your words earlier.

I want to put out a problem that I’ve encountered. I don’t know whether you can answer this or not. I’m aware of a family who was raising kind of an adopted niece—so it was sort of family. The niece got in trouble eventually, as a teenager, and needed addiction services, but the only way the family could get access to those services was to make her a ward of the crown. They could not access those services as the family who was actually caring for her. I’m wondering if you can speak to that, or perhaps this is something that could be discussed when this goes to committee.