My phone is buzzing, I’m told. Sorry about that. Sorry, broadcast.

I really lost where I was now.

Interjection.

Oh, I know where I was. I raised it during questions to the minister—of the underfunding of children’s aid societies. The funding formula has never been right. The funding formula was based on how many kids in care—and now the systemic work that’s supposed to be happening is keeping families together, right? So we know this, and children’s aid knows this, and the OACAS knows this—everybody knows this. Everybody is working towards that. But now we have less kids in care, and we’re supporting more kids at home, within their families. That’s good money. That’s a good way to do it. But the funding is not there now.

In 2022-23, a $15.6-million deficit—the government had to pony up to help those children’s aids that were in deficits. And from 2023-24, they’re already projecting a $15-million deficit.

How can we possibly keep kids safe in their homes if we’re not providing the proactive work, like mental health supports, like affordable housing, like affordable groceries? These are the kinds of things that break down families—mental health and addictions. This is where families fall through the cracks.

If we’re not providing that front-end money, then, sure, we’re going to have to pay all that at the back end—which is more inspectors to get into homes to make sure that they’re not abusing kids.

It’s like building more jails instead of stopping crime. We need to be preventing the crimes. We need to be helping youth, making sure they have resources, making sure they have access to sports and to school clubs and to things that help them be healthy. Mental health supports—front end. The back end is the cleanup. The back end is the jail and more jail guards. That’s not what we need to be doing.

And within the children’s aid sector, it’s the exact same thing—keeping families together, providing them the supports, making sure that they have food in the fridge and that they can keep the lights on and that everybody is in a safe environment takes us away from these for-profit group homes that are, decade after decade, abusing our kids.

There are, in this bill, further licensing restrictions, making it more stringent, making sure that things are built into legislation, so when an inspector does go there, they can see that there can’t be—I don’t know. What does the bill say? I’ll look for it while I’m talking—that there are things in place that are further restrictions and that there is further implementation to keep kids safe from abuse, from suppression, from racism, from all of these things. They’re now going to be built into the bill, which is great, and it does put heftier fines on these licensees—I believe it goes from $1,000 to $250,000. So there will be no mistake. The $1,000 they blew off because the cash cows provided them that money already, so they didn’t care about the $1,000. But now, the $250,000 is going to be a stark difference.

I wish I could find that article that talks about kids being cash cows, because—what a disgraceful article. When the providers are living it up to the life in all their big beach homes and cottages and vacation homes and they’re talking about kids as if they’re cash cows within the system and calling the kids “paycheques.” Can you imagine that this is a system that this government and the Liberal government before them supported, and that we have been calling out for years and years to do better by?

Devon Freeman was a young Indigenous man—I believe he was from Hamilton. He was put into a group home. He was an unhappy young man. He had some mental health issues. He did not get the supports that he needed, and he went missing. Nobody reported him missing for quite some time. Nobody really did much of a look for him to find out where he was. I don’t even believe that his grandmother, who was his family, knew that he was missing for quite some time. He died by suicide. They found him six months after the fact in a tree not far from the group home—six months.

There was a great inquest that went into that case. I believe there were 80-some-odd recommendations to do better. I’m still looking into what recommendations have been enacted and which ones have not. There are various groups that have been called into that—Hamilton police, I know the ones that they were asked. I didn’t have to ask, because I knew the one recommendation for them was to start a missing persons department, which they have done. I know that for a fact, so I know that part has been done. There are several inquest recommendations there that, like I said, we’re having a deeper look into to try to find out which ones have been done and which ones haven’t.

Again, that young man was let down by a system where his grandmother thought that he was safe and that he was going to be taken care of, and yet he was not.

This article is from November 24, 2022, two years ago:

“Ontario’s official opposition is calling on the Doug Ford government to investigate one of the province’s largest operators of kids’ group homes following an investigation on Global News.

“The NDP demanded action on the ‘abusive’ conditions some kids are facing inside the for-profit company Hatts Off, which operates nine children’s group homes and more than two dozen foster homes across southern Ontario.

“A Global News investigation revealed allegations of human trafficking that went ignored—kids who say they were overmedicated, underqualified staff and violent physical restraints, according to 70 interviews with current and former workers and youth who worked or lived in Hatts Off homes.”

I’m just going to skip through to a couple of places.

“The reporting also profiled the story of Cassidy Franck, who was 16 years old when she lived at a girls-only group home on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ontario, in 2021. Franck alleged that the conditions of the home were ‘terrible’ and that she managed to leave the home by going to live with a staff member.”

It gets better—a staff member from the group home.

“After arriving at the apartment, Franck said she was forced to sell drugs and was ultimately rescued by Hamilton Police Service’s human trafficking division.”

This is a staff person who lived in one of these unregulated group homes that really had no business being there. What qualifications did she have to be taking care of young people?

I’ve heard horror stories from other group homes in my riding, years ago—Hatts Off in particular—that had young women taking care of these teenage boys. The clothing was inappropriate, the behaviours were inappropriate. The neighbourhood was so concerned about what was happening there. We were able to file some complaints through the community and had things cleaned up a bit there—but this is just the unregulated, awful business of our child and youth sector.

“Global News also uncovered a trail of documents, including a secret draft report, an expert review for the Ontario coroner, and countless ministry inspections, which for years pointed to signs of concern at Hatts Off. The reporting also revealed a lack of accountability and oversight.”

It’s absolutely horrific what has been happening in these homes for so many years, with no direction from the government. This many years, this many deaths, this many occurrences—and now we’re starting to see some changes within the system. Is it going to be enough?

I asked the minister about the inspection levels. I’m happy to hear that there are going to be uninvited and unnotified inspections. I hope that they’re at night, when the young people are home, and not during the day, when they’re in school—because that happens a lot. Inspectors go up—“Oh, and everything is fine. Everybody was at school, and everything was fine and dandy and looked great.” How about going there when young people are home and making sure that you are seeing these young people, that they are home and that they are accounted for and they are not drugged?

We have definitely heard about the drugging incidents—the young people who state that sometimes they were getting five pills a day, just keeping them sedated all day long, where they couldn’t even function and be able to go to school, probably, and the aggression that came from that kind of restraint.

And there are many physical restraint complaints that came in about these homes that just went undone—and hopefully, some of this legislation will help fix that.

What I would truly like to see is public group homes. Take away the for-profit group homes that are currently in the system that are allowing these kids to be used as cash cows, that are creating income for private profit. We should be doing nothing but focusing on the well-being and health of our kids who are in care to make sure that they get the services that they need, and regulating the group homes to make sure that there is oversight, that there are bodies that will ensure that young people have the support that they need and that they are in happy and healthy homes. There can be nothing more important than making sure that that happens.

The Ombudsman is another piece that’s being added to this bill. Back when the government took out the provincial advocate for children and youth—when he fired the child advocate, quite frankly, closed down the office—the Ombudsman was given the powers to be able to speak up for children and youth in care. I did have a conversation with the Ombudsman the other day—asking him his insight. He believes that he is able to keep up. He thinks that at the rate that currently exists in his office, they’re fine and they will not need the extra expansion of funding, but he promises me that once that gets out of control and he does need that extra support, he will be making sure the government has that.

What is happening in this legislation? I know that it was something that we talked about with the child advocate when we did the new child and family services act—one of their recommendations was that every child have access to the information, to be able to contact the child advocate. So I guess that now this is being put in for the Ombudsman—that the kids have access to information about the Ombudsman.

My concern is, what has been happening for the past six years, since the child advocate was fired and the Ombudsman was put in place to take on this role of supporting young people when they feel that the system has treated them unfairly? The Ombudsman will tell us that they’ve had, I believe, 200-plus complaints come into their office from child welfare. That is the part that concerns me. There were 2,000-plus complaints that went into the child advocate’s office from child welfare. So that’s a big difference in numbers. I don’t know whether it’s because this piece has been followed through, whether the information for the Ombudsman has already been there, but now, it’s going to be forced to be there, so it will be interesting to see if those numbers increase or not and what that will do to the Ombudsman’s office. It will also come in regulations, I’m told—how this is going to be communicated to young people, ensuring that every young person knows when they enter the system that they have the right to access the Ombudsman, and to make sure that they have privacy to be able to talk to the Ombudsman without people hearing their stories. Of course, they wouldn’t want the same people they’re complaining about to hear their concerns. They would want and need privacy. So I’m hoping that’s going to be in there, to ensure that they do know their rights and they know where to go when they need help. That’s an important piece.

Bill 188 adds a requirement that a person who is employed in the care of children’s aid, as defined in the act, needs to report instances of immediate danger to the well-being of a child or youth in care when that danger is caused by a licensee or provider. That essentially creates a whistle-blower requirement that remains a requirement even when there have been previous reports relating to the child. This actually wraps in the need to be able to speak freely.

I brought forward a bill previously, in previous governments, on whistle-blower protection, to open up the Employment Standards Act to ensure that people did have the ability to speak freely and without fear of reprisal, for the benefit of the kids and for the benefit of that person working within the system—to know that when they had something that they had seen was wrong, they weren’t scared to tell, which is another way of keeping kids safe. So I’m happy to see that this is here and that that’s now being looked at, because it’s an important piece. I think it was in 2015 that I brought that legislation forward, so I’m glad to see it in this legislation today.

The other thing I mentioned which I was happy to see in the legislation, which I brought up to the minister earlier through the question portion of his debate, was Katelynn’s Principle. The bill talks about the child being the centre and that every person has a responsibility—and that’s where he wanted to add the educational assistants. I think that we could be adding educational workers—that any adult who comes in contact with that child and who is in a place of responsibility has a responsibility to do that.

Katelynn’s Principle was another bill I brought forward many years ago, in 2016, which was a recommendation from Katelynn’s inquest. Katelynn, unfortunately, died in the hands of the people who were, again, through children’s aid, supposed to be taking care of her. They had been friends of her mother, who was not capable of taking care of Katelynn, and these people—it was all through children’s aid. They had been looked at, and everything was supposed to be fine. They abused Katelynn so terribly that she died. The number one recommendation from her inquest was Katelynn’s Principle—to enshrine it as the guiding principle for decisions affecting children. During the new Child and Family Services Act, we tried to get them to implement Katelynn’s Principle again, at that time, but they did not do it. What they did was, they added it to the preamble of the Child and Family Services Act.

Seeing what’s before us today, talking about adults who are in responsible positions to take care of and be there to speak out on behalf of children—to have that whistle-blower protection, but to also understand that the child is the centre of all decisions, is, I think, a really important piece that needs to be looked at.

So I would ask once again—here it is. It says, “The first recommendation, referred to as Katelynn’s Principle, places children at the centre of decisions affecting them. The jury requested that all parties to the coroner’s inquest ensure that Katelynn’s Principle apply to all services, policies, legislation and decision-making affecting children.”

This would ensure that every decision that is made is always child-centred and that individual rights—“The child must always be seen, the child’s voice must be heard, and the child must be listened to and respected.”

“The child’s heritage must be taken into consideration and respected. Attention must be paid to the broad and diverse communities the child identifies with, including communities defined by matters such as race, ethnicity, religion, language, and sexual orientation.”

“Actions must be taken to ensure that a child who is capable of forming their own views is able to express those views freely and safely about matters affecting them.”

“The child’s views must be given due weight in accordance with the child’s age and maturity.”

“In accordance with the child’s age and maturity, the child must be given the opportunity to participate before any decisions affecting the child are made, whether the participation is direct or through a support person or representative.”

“In accordance with the child’s age and maturity, the child must be engaged through honest and respectful dialogue about how and why decisions affecting them are made.”

“Every person who provides services to children or services affecting children is a child advocate. Advocacy may be a child’s lifeline and it must occur from the point of first contact and on a continuous basis thereafter.”

Just reading those words after so many years—it still rings true. There is nothing about what I just read that could not be put into legislation today. There’s nothing that we can do here that shouldn’t be put through the lens of a child.

Like I said earlier, our most valuable resource is our children. They are the ones we are nurturing today to care for us later. They will be our doctors. They will be our lawyers. They will be our teachers. They will be our legislators. They will be our Premier. They will fill every role that we see in our community today. Our children of today will eventually fill those roles. If we don’t nurture those children, if we don’t maintain those children’s mental health, if we don’t help support them when they need support, then we are failing them and we are failing ourselves; we’re failing our generations to come.

That is the basis of everything, and what I just read to you in Katelynn Sampson’s principle could not ring more true today than it did the day that I did that reading in 2015 and the day that the inquest recommended that recommendation for Katelynn and for children, going forward.

This is an ample opportunity to actually introduce that legislation again and to embed it into what we’re seeing before us under Bill 188. There’s always room for improvement, and I know that the folks who worked on this bill probably pushed for a lot of things to be put into this legislation today and they had to settle for what they got, but they also know that settling for what they got was still a win. I’ll never take that away from them. I think it’s fantastic that they were able to get to this point, because we have definitely seen years of neglect when it comes to our child welfare system and supports serving our children so they’re not in the child welfare system. They have to go hand in hand. We can’t talk about one system without talking about the other. We can’t support children without supporting our health care system to ensure that they have what they need. How many complex-care kids are in care today because the health system denies them, because they don’t have nurses in their homes, because they can’t afford it, because now the private nurses cost more than what they’re allotted through their critical care funding? This is a reality.

I’m not sure if the members across know these realities. I don’t know if they’ve had the opportunity to speak to parents, like I have. I’ve only had that opportunity mainly, probably, because I am the critic on this file. Have they talked to parents with kids who have complex critical care needs and who are not able to maintain those 24-hour nurses like they need? And what happens is the kids then become—the children’s aid stepping in and saying, “We’re taking these kids because you can’t care for the kids.” But I’ll tell you, they end up in the children’s aid and they still can’t get the same services, so it’s a revolving door. Is it in the best interests of children? Definitely not. Can we fix it? Yes. We can ensure that there’s proper funding into children’s mental health services. We can ensure there’s proper funding into complex care needs. We can ensure there’s proper funding for autism services. We can ensure there’s proper funding to really allow children’s aid services to proactively keep families supported at home. We can actively ensure that we have enough children’s aid, like, care homes, not group homes—family homes.

I remember, as a child, my parents were always foster parents, and how many kids we had in our house sometimes. My dad would be loading up—he had a deal with the grocery store. It’s how we got more bread and how we got more of this and more of that, so my parents could take care of all these kids. I remember them so clearly. They were my brothers and my sisters. I still speak to some of them today, and when I do see them, the emotion that I have for them is overwhelming, because now, as an adult, and being in the role that I’ve been in, I’ve learned the trials and tribulations and struggles that I would never have known about when I was a kid. Now I know and understand, and I see and I think about it differently, and I can talk to them differently about their experiences in the children’s aid societies. I remember very clearly the happy times that we had and the sad times, when they would leave and they had to go back to their homes or their families. It was such an exciting time for them, of course. They were going back to their families. But it was sad for us—because that was my brother, and now he’s gone.

We have to do better. We don’t have these foster homes to be able to care for these kids anymore. Indigenous homes—how hard is it to be able to get them into the system to be able to support them? We’re not even helping kinship families. So if they’re my family member, no one is going to help support me, even though I don’t have money to buy a crib or I don’t have money to buy all the extra clothes and the extra food and the extra everything that it costs to be able to raise a child. I’m just expected to do it now, because they’re kin, they’re family. Well, that’s great. I really want to be able to help my family, but I need the financial support to be able to do that because I’m struggling already just to be able to support my own family. This is the reality of today’s day and age. So if we don’t put in this work to get more families into the systems, to attract Muslim families and Black families and families from everywhere so that children can see themselves reflected in the families they’re actually put into—these are the kinds of initiatives that we still need to do.

This bill today isn’t going to fix the system. It’s going to fix a couple of little things. Hopefully, it’s going to fix some things in the group home licensing, but it’s really not going to be the bottom line for the children’s aid societies, which are begging for funding. They’re running deficits, which they’re not allowed to do. The government had to bail them out in the last year, and they’re going to have to bail them out again. They can’t continue to function like this. They have to be able to proactively be ready to support those families coming in, be able to attract families to support kids—Black families, Indigenous families, Muslim families.

The work doesn’t happen on its own, and it doesn’t happen for free. It actually takes a fully funded system to save money.

And for Conservatives—you would think that they would understand the fact that they want to save money, but they don’t. They just talk about it, and then they just say that everybody else wants to raise taxes. Well, it’s the same taxpayer who is footing the bill, regardless of what level of government you’re paying it to. And by making sure that our kids are supported—there can be absolutely nothing more important than doing that.

I want to say, once again, these homes should not be for-profit. They need to be not-for-profit. It will save money. It will ensure there’s proper care. They need to be regulated. We need to ensure that we have ongoing inspections—day, night, all the time. Make sure those kids are home when those inspections are happening—not showing up when all the kids are in school and expecting that everything is fine and dandy, when we don’t know that. We need to ensure that’s the case.

We need to get these kids off of being drugged all the time. There’s actual therapy that could happen, instead of drugging them with drugs to calm them down. No. Give them proper therapy. Make sure they have actual recreational sport and supports and other things that they need to live functional lives, like everybody else’s kids. They should have access to these things, but they don’t.

When they’re cash cows and when they’re doing nothing but putting a paycheque, then they’re not—we can’t expect them to not fail. We’re setting them up for failure. That’s not okay. It’s not good enough. We live in a very, very prosperous, very rich province. But it’s a province where people are struggling, and our kids who are in care—who are literally our kids; they are the government’s kids. As the government, you are required to take care of them. It’s your responsibility. You have to make sure that more legislation comes before this House quick.

Keep pushing, Jane. Push them hard. I know that you have the ability to do so and that you have the ear of the government, and that you’ve worked so hard to get to this position. You’ve put yourself on the inside, because that’s the only way that change happens. It never happens from banging on a window from the outside. It happens from the inside. And you put yourself in a good position to do that.

Kids are counting on us to do the right thing. They’re counting on us to ensure that there’s legislation to protect them, to keep them safe; that parents aren’t giving up their children to group homes that are failing them; that parents can know, for once, they will be able to trust a system and say, “If I’m giving up my kid, I know they’re going to be safe. They’re not being abused, they’re not getting drugged, they’re not being locked up, and they’re not dying by suicide”—because that’s the actual reality.

We can do better. It’s up to you to do better. This bill is a good start. It’s a small start. It’s a little thing that’s happening. Let’s get it done. Let’s work through it. Let’s work on some really good amendments and, hopefully, strengthen it up as best as we can. And then let’s get on to the next bill that is actually going to do more and ensure that children’s aid societies in this province have the ability to proactively keep families together—kids at home, happy and healthy, with the supports that they need to flourish and thrive.