Thank you to the member from London West. I appreciate your remarks, but I was also reading reports—there were 79 reports totalling 4,644 pages from one source alone that the Liberal government, propped up by the NDP, missed the chance to improve child welfare in Ontario. I am thankful that Bill 188 is addressing a lot of these things, but I’m sure there’s still more to be done. But don’t you think what we have with the welfare redesign and also the Ready, Set, Go Program and a lot of other things that we have improved on is a big improvement from what we had before?

We’ll now have questions to the member for London West.

Thank you to the member from London West for such an impassioned speech on the Supporting Children’s Futures Act. One thing that really struck me is her talking so passionately about parents having to surrender their children to access services and really giving their children up to the children’s aid because they have no other options. The fact that in Ontario, children’s aid societies now have a youth in need of treatment but not in need of care really tells the story of how broken this system is. I wanted to give you an opportunity, please, to talk about why this is happening and really how desperate and dismal a state of affairs it is that parents have to give their children up for them to access mental health supports.

Thank you to the member for the question. I want to assure the member that the NDP would never prop up the Liberals, just as we would never prop up any government that was going to undermine the rights of vulnerable children. The NDP has been calling for the reinstatement of the child and youth advocate. That is something that is missing from this bill that there was an opportunity for the government to move ahead with. The NDP has been calling for years for an end of for-profit group homes that exploit loopholes, that take advantage of children, that are abusive to children. We saw that horrendous exposé of what is happening to some of the most marginalized and vulnerable children in a for-profit group system.

One of the things that this bill proposes to do is extend what I will call the mandatory reporting requirement. That mandatory reporting requirement also exists for some professionals, such as teachers, physicians and social workers. They have a duty to report if they have a reasonable suspicion of child neglect or a child being in need of protection. The proposal in this bill is to extend that reporting requirement to early childhood educators.

You might think that’s a responsibility or a burden, but actually, it’s meant to protect the early childhood educator, who now doesn’t have to make the call. They have an obligation to do it, and therefore that gives them certain legal protections in view of the fact that now that the law has placed them under the obligation to report, they are now protected. I think that’s a very good development. I would like to ask the member to express her opinion on that.

We agree that is a very good development. It’s too bad that it has taken this long for such a development to be put in place, because we have been calling for whistle-blower protections in this sector for a number of years. Certainly we have an obligation to ensure that people—teachers, educators—who are employed in the care of children can report suspicions of abuse without fearing that they will not be protected. This is one of the reasons that we do support this bill. We do recognize that this is important, but it’s sad that it is so long overdue.

We do not have a children’s mental health system that is coordinated, that is easy for families to navigate, that ensures that young people who are in deep crisis get the mental health treatment that they require. We really need to take a systemic look at the mental health system and make sure that the services are there for parents and children who need them.

We had heard the former provincial child advocate—he had said that he received roughly 19,000 serious occurrence reports, a quarter produced by group residential homes. The government has failed to enable that kind—

I am pleased to be able to ask a question of my colleague from London West, who talked about the importance of keeping children safe who are in care, but also the need to keep them out of care in the first place, as she had mentioned that the government is not dealing with causation in a way that they ought to be with so much at stake and mentioned some of the community-based treatment options generally.

I’m wondering if, specifically, the member could give us some examples of ways to support children so that they’re able to stay out of care and be served better in the community.

It’s my honour to speak on Bill 188, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act, 2024. Before I begin, I would like to thank my colleague the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services for bringing forth this crucial bill. This bill, if passed, would significantly enhance the safety, security and well-being of children and youth in care across our province.

Speaker, our government stands firm in its commitment to ensure that no one is left behind. We are working towards a province where all children, youth and families, including those getting support through Ontario’s children and youth services sector, have the resources and support they need to thrive. This bill is all about stepping up to better protect the rights of children and youth, enhancing the quality of services and improving the accountability of service providers.

Since 2022, our government has been working hard at redesigning Ontario’s child welfare system. We’re focusing on early intervention, improving outcomes for children and tearing down barriers to support. We did that because every child and youth deserves a decent start in life and a safe and stable home, regardless of their circumstances.

This bill is packed with initiatives aimed at ensuring quality care and services for children and youth in care. We are talking about introducing new offences and administrative penalties to boost oversight of out-of-home care. We’re expanding who is responsible for reporting concerns, with better information sharing to keep our kids safe. Plus, we are levelling the playing field by strengthening privacy provisions for youth formerly in care.

Since launching the comprehensive redesign of child welfare in Ontario, we have put many new measures in place. This includes, just to name a few, developing a new framework for what out-of-home care looks like; increasing and enhancing oversight and accountability for out-of-home care, and supporting that oversight by adding 20 new positions across the province to support the management, inspection and oversight of out-of-home care for children and youth; and launching the Ready, Set, Go Program, which provides youth in the care of children’s aid societies with the life skills they need, starting at 13, and financial support when they leave care up to the age of 23.

Speaker, transforming child and family services is a significant undertaking, and it takes time. Many of the reforms proposed in this bill are designed to better support youth and provide the skills and knowledge that will help them transition to adulthood. The changes also build on the Ready, Set, Go Program, which we launched back on April 1, 2023. This program represents another significant step coming out of the Child Welfare Redesign Strategy. The Ready, Set, Go Program provides youth transitioning out of care with life skills and supports they need to pursue post-secondary education, skilled trades training and employment opportunities.

Under the new program, children’s aid societies will begin focusing on helping children plan for their future at an earlier age. Starting at 13, they will begin learning practical life skills and planning education goals. At age 15, the emphasis will expand to financial literacy and preparing for the workforce, including managing personal finances, setting up a bank account, grocery shopping, résumé building, and how to access social services and other supports.

The Ready, Set, Go Program is a game-changer for youth transitioning out of care. We have increased the financial assistance, raising it from $850 to $1,800 a month at the age of 18, gradually decreasing to $1,000 by age 20. Those staying in care at 21 receive $1,000, and at age 22, $500. Plus, they can work up to 40 hours a week without losing support. And for those pursuing education or training, we are providing an extra $500 monthly from age 20, ensuring they have the resources to thrive. These monthly financial support increases will provide youth better quality of life and safer housing opportunities so that they can focus on their studies or work. By extending care until 23 and increasing financial support, we are giving these youth a solid foundation for their future.

The Ready, Set, Go Program, developed with input and advice from former youth in care, child welfare advocates, partners, and informed by research, has a three-year, $170-million funding commitment from the government. In addition, we are expected to support more than 4,000 youth this year as they prepare for adulthood. It’s a great start to support the transition from being a youth in care to becoming a young adult.

Speaker, at its core, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act, 2024, is all about looking out for the children and youth in Ontario who need our support the most. It’s about putting measures in place to make sure they’re safe, well cared for, and have the opportunities they deserve to succeed. If this bill passes, it’s going to make a real difference. We are talking about strengthening oversight and enforcement tools for out-of-home care, ensuring that our kids’ privacy is respected, and updating our laws based on what we have learned since they were first put in place.

These changes aren’t just about the here and now; they are about setting our children up for success in the long run. In the short term, it means safer and more consistent services for those living away from home. But in the long term, it means preparing them for adulthood and giving them the tools they need to succeed.

Our government is committed to making life better for all children and youth in Ontario, especially those in care. Some examples of these measures include:

—mandating information-sharing between children’s aid societies and the ministry about specific health and safety risks to children in licensed out-of-home care settings;

—requiring children’s aid services to visit children placed in out-of-home care more frequently: every 30 days, instead of every 90 days;

—requiring unannounced, in-person visits by children’s aid societies in certain circumstances; for example, if a visit cannot be scheduled because the society was unable to contact the child or the caregivers, or if there are concerns related to the well-being of the child; and

—requirements that give youth in children’s residences and foster homes greater guarantees of privacy.

These measures may seem small, but they add up to big changes that will make a real, tangible difference in the lives of our most vulnerable youth. And that is something worth fighting for.

In closing, the passage of Bill 188 would bring us closer to our vision of an Ontario where every child, youth and family has the resources they need to thrive. Our children and youth are the future, and it is our responsibility to ensure that they have the support they need to succeed. I urge all the members of this House to support this bill as we continue to strengthen families and communities across this great province.

On the contrary, I think it is telling me that the NDP speaker’s priority seems to be giving their defeated candidate from Don Valley West a job. I’ve also noticed that she said of this bill’s privacy provisions, there are positive changes in this announcement.

From 2008 to 2019, the office of the children’s advocate wrote 79 reports that total 4,644 pages. It is just for one source. It should have been the spur of the Liberal government to act, and it should have made the NDP demand action from them, from the previous government.

In fact, it’s our government that knew the time for more reports was over. It was our government that took action and redesigned the children’s welfare system. The child advocate’s investigative function was folded into the Office of the Ombudsman and continues to this day.

The changes also aim to better protect children and youth with a history in the child welfare system that would further restrict access by others to their welfare records.

These changes—

It’s now time for questions.

Thank you to the member for Markham–Unionville for his comments. I know I don’t have much time, but we’re hearing a lot of positive feedback from even the opposition on this bill. They’ve said it’s a good bill, that it’s a good start. They’re happy to see some changes after years of neglect.

Do you have some parts of this bill that you think are going to be really important to improve the lives of vulnerable children in Ontario?

Earlier in the debate, we heard about kin placements, which is a preferred option for children being placed in temporary custody, but the money reimbursed to those families—so a family placement, a kin placement—is $280 a month versus the $1,000 that is for adoptive families. That’s a huge difference.

And when we know being placed with family is a better option with better outcomes, why is that not something we see in this bill? And would the government be willing to make that change based on the recommendations from those in the know making decisions in the best interests of children?

My question to the government with regard to Bill 188, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act: There are immediate steps that you can do today to advance the futures and keep safe and well the children and youth of Ontario.

One of those things is to pass Bill 174, the Missing Persons Amendment Act. That would really help protect vulnerable people, especially those with disabilities. This is a bill that I understand the member from Hamilton Mountain has put forth. This government has said yes to this and yet you have not delivered.

Another thing to help our children and youth: bring back the provincial child and youth advocate so there can be a voice, an independent non-partisan voice, in this Legislature speaking on behalf of children and youth. Don’t do it for the NDP; do it for the kids. Do it for the family. Do it for the people who feel down and out and betrayed by the care system.

I’m happy to have a few minutes to talk to Bill 188, An Act to amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 and various other Acts.

It has been a long time coming, Speaker. We have known of horrific situations in the child welfare system for a long time. The children’s aid societies have come forward, telling us, asking us, begging us to make changes, and I’m happy to see that some of those changes have been incorporated into this bill. But there are other big asks that have been there for a long time that are not in the bill, and I’m sorry that they are not there.

When you look at child protection, you have to look at the continuum of it. You start with: How do you protect them? How do you make sure that they do not end up in care? How do you make sure that they do not end up having to be cared for by the children’s aid society and cared for in residential care in different parts of the province?

I can tell you that in Nickel Belt, for the people who I represent, the number one reason why the children’s aid society goes in and takes the child away from the family for the protection of the child is the lack of mental health services. In my community, first of all, 40,000 people do not have access to primary care, so they cannot go see their family physician or their nurse practitioners because they are on the wait-list for Health Care Connect for years on end.

Their child that they love, that they want to support—they are good people who want to do good for their children—develops a mental illness. The child will be admitted into the hospital. After you wait for 36 hours in the emergency room, your child will finally be seen. He or she may be admitted and then get discharged, and they say he needs or she needs to have follow-up in the community. The average wait time for community-based mental health services for children in my community is 18 months. It used to be 12 months, which was way too long; 18 months is a lifetime when you’re a child facing mental illness. During that 18 months, Speaker, the family will fall apart.

We are not mental health experts. They don’t know what’s good to do for the child. One parent will say, “We should do this”; the other one will say something else. Then the child starts to act up in school, and the school sends the child back home and calls the children’s aid society because they can see that there’s something going on. Those are good families who want to care for their kids; they just don’t know what’s the right thing to do when the kid starts to act out, when the kid starts to be sick and there’s no way for them to access care, so the kid eventually will fall into the protection of children’s aid.

The good thing, if there’s ever a good thing when a child is taken away, is that the children’s aid will have access to intensive children’s mental health services and the kid will gain access. That access will not be in our community; that access will be hundreds of kilometres away, where the child will be sent.

For the family, it is extremely difficult. They will continue to have visiting access to their child, but it’s not obvious to drive 400 kilometres away for a two-hour visit in person with the child. It becomes really, really difficult. The family will fall apart; most of them will end up in divorce.

When the child gets the treatment he or she needs, comes back to northern Ontario, their life will be completely different. There’s no more mom and dad. There’s no more family. The family has fallen apart.

None of those working up front to support children, to support families so that we don’t end up needing children’s aid services are addressed in the bill. What is addressed in the bill is residential, group and foster homes, and believe me, Speaker, there is a lot of room for improvement at that end.

There are quite a few First Nations families in my riding. I’m proud to say that Wahnapitae First Nation, Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and Mattagami First Nation are all in my riding. There are quite a few First Nations around Bisco, Westree, Shining Tree etc.

You will have seen in the news a report that was done about children from First Nations who are in care. This report was really hard to read. There was a most serious allegation involving one of the biggest for-profit residential care providers, Hatts Off. The investigation showed that the privately run group home had, as a profit model, First Nations kids from northern Ontario communities. Those kids are called “cash cows.” They’re called “bread and butter.” One of the children who was in one of those homes asked a First Nations social worker if she had come to rescue him—this is how poorly.

I can also talk about Connor Homes in eastern Ontario, which were kept in a state of disrepair. The kids in care were left with few resources, while the owner amassed a personal fortune in real estate holdings. Some of the people who worked there would tell you that you knew that the owner had money, but it wasn’t the kids who saw that money or saw the care that should have come with it. The homes frequently used physical restraints on the kids in their care. And the story goes on—that goes from bad to worse.

There are steps in this bill that would help. One of the big ones is that every child in care will know that they can call upon the Ombudsman. Don’t get me wrong; I, like every member on this side in my caucus, in the NDP—we want the child and youth advocate to come back. The child and youth advocate was the one telling us where the complaints are coming from, and of the—I forgot the numbers—roughly 19,000 serious occurrence reports, a quarter of them were produced from group residential homes. We’ve known about this for quite a few years. The special task force on residential care is several years old. The time to act was years ago. But I’m happy that some steps are being taken so that every child who is in a residential, group or foster home will know that if they feel something is wrong, they will be able to call the Ombudsman. This is one part of the bill that I support—make it readily available so that children can call out for help.

I would have liked to see more protection for whistle-blowers. Everybody who holds a health professional licence in Ontario—we have a mandate to call a children’s aid society the minute that we suspect that a child is in need. We don’t have to have any proof. If we suspect that a child is in need, everybody who holds a licence in Ontario has a mandatory obligation to call. This mandatory obligation to call will now be for people who work in our schools; it should have been there way before, because every kid in Ontario goes to school. They are our eyes and ears as to what’s going on with the children, and they should not have to amass a proof big enough to get a police officer to look at the case. If they suspect something, call the children’s aid society and let them do the investigation to make sure that the child is safe rather than amassing enough proof to show that the child has been abused. This is something else in the bill that I’m more than willing to support.

Thirty.

When you’re speaking about mental health and children’s mental health, a statistic that’s disturbing which was shared by Children’s Mental Health Ontario at the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs was that four of the top 10 reasons for the hospitalization of children and youth are for mental health challenges.

Particularly, I’d like to hear the member comment about wage parity, because mental health care workers in hospitals make 50% more than someone in community-based mental health services. As well, mental health workers in the youth justice sector haven’t seen an increase in over 17 years. Would you care to comment about the importance of wage parity and how that will help children receiving mental health services?

Thank you to the member from Nickel Belt for her comments today on this bill. I’m very happy to hear that the opposition members have said things like it’s a good bill, it’s a good start and, after years of neglect, we’re starting to see some progress. We all think this is an important area to make progress in.

On April 20, 2021, your leader said, “The research is clear and it is exhaustive. It shows that the system needs to be overhauled to prepare youth better to transition into adulthood. Kids now are aging out with no transitions or supports past the age of 18.”

Our government, understanding that challenge, set up the Ready, Set, Go Program, a program for youth leaving care across the province, which I was pretty excited about. I think I heard Jane Kovarikova talking about that on TVO’s The Agenda, but the members of the opposition voted against that. Does the member now regret that vote?

We have time for questions.

To the member from Nickel Belt: With the new enforcement tools proposed in this bill, there’s going to be more information about the track records of service providers, with all the history of non-compliance. This will be transparently posted on the government’s website. Now, agencies placing children and the public at large would be able to access the history of enforcement actions taken against a particular service provider, including new compliance orders right up to the new administrative monetary penalties.

So my question to the member is: I’m assuming that you would prefer that this information about service providers definitely be publicly disclosed.

Well, I’m happy to share that for children who are crown wards who are transitioning out, Laurentian University in Sudbury has a program where they offer free tuition. My colleague the MPP for Sudbury as well as my colleague the MPP from London North Centre have worked with the university around London. We have worked with Laurentian University where children who are aging out, who are crown wards, get free tuition, and they get supported while they go to university. That has been life-changing for every single one of them who has been able to take advantage of this program.

We are talking 25 young people in London and—

Le plus de transparence, le plus d’imputabilité que tu as avec ceux qui s’occupent des enfants, ceux qui s’occupent—de continuer leur accès, c’est toujours important. C’est quelque chose de bien. C’est quelque chose qui aurait dû être fait avant, mais, je te dirais, j’aimerais amener ça une étape plus loin, où on est certain que c’est seulement des compagnies à but non lucratif qui s’occupent de nos enfants.

This government has been in power for six years, and the previous government six years, the Liberals—no base budget increase. Think of everything that has changed. It is almost impossible for those agencies to give the people who work there a pay increase because the cost of heating, the cost of electricity, the cost of Internet, the cost of cellphones, the cost of everything has gone up, but their base budget has not. They cannot recruit and retain a stable workforce because they cannot offer good jobs.

All of this could change instantly if we had pay parity, if we realized the importance of community-based children’s mental health workers and paid them what they are worth. It would attract more people to the profession, keep them in the children’s mental health system for the good of all kids.