It truly is an honour to be able to stand in this Legislature as the member for Hamilton Mountain, as well as to be the official opposition critic for children, community and social services.

When I was first elected, in 2011, I was appointed critic of children’s services at that time. My first experience of the children’s file was to sit in on the Youth Leaving Care Hearings, and what an experience that was. You were here at that time, Speaker. I’m not sure if you had the ability to step in, because many members could and couldn’t—it wasn’t to point any member out; by no means. It was quite the experience. It was down in the main committee room. There were youth from all over the province who were telling their stories. They were sharing their stories. They were singing their stories. They created poetry. They created many forms of ways of being able to share their very difficult stories.

As kids in care, nobody was coming here and talking about rainbows and lollipops. They were coming here and talking about the struggles that they faced within the children’s aid societies, and it was very powerful, and from that came My Real Life Book report, which sat with the Liberals at that time. One of the main features that they had asked for was to create youth leaving care day, and we did that, which was fantastic. It happens every May 14. That day allows us the opportunity to reflect and to reaffirm our commitment to youth in care—because let’s not forget that when a youth comes into care, the government then becomes their parent, and as parents, the government has a responsibility to ensure that that youth has what they need to thrive and survive. We definitely heard from youth at that time that the struggles were real. We heard many stories. And today, 13 years later, we’re still talking to youth in care and from care and we’re still hearing so many struggles.

It’s important that legislation comes before this House, because it doesn’t happen very often that an act is opened—unless, of course, under this government, it’s a lot of housing and building roads. That gets opened a lot, but the youth file does not. The last time that we had a bill under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act was 2017. It’s been many years since we’ve had the ability to debate a very important bill for our most vulnerable youth in this Legislature. It gives me great pride to be able to stand here in my place, be able to advocate further for young people in care and be able to raise their voices to the best of my ability, as should be each and every one of our jobs, and so I do that very proudly.

When we fast-forwarded to 2018 and this Conservative government came into power, one of the first measures that they did was combine the children’s ministry and community and social services. What that did was it took the focus away from kids. To combine it into a very large ministry just allowed the children’s needs to be muddled, to not be the focus. That was terribly unfortunate. That was one of the government’s first measures, to take away that self-focusing children’s ministry.

The next thing they did was they fired the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth. They did that really quickly. They did it pretty much under a cloak of darkness, where he found out—not respectfully, through any interview process or even a nice letter; he found out through the media that his office was being shuttered.

The office of the provincial advocate had the ability to bring forward voices and to raise the voices and allow young people to raise their own voices of their needs. We know that there are a lot of kids in this province with great needs and that structures are important to a child’s best interest. So not having the ability to raise those voices and to hear those voices clearly, quite frankly, stifled the voice of children. That is probably one of the most crass things that this government could have done on their way in the door in 2018.

We had children around the province who found themselves in groups like themselves that allowed that advocacy to flourish, to nourish each other, to stand together so that they weren’t afraid to tell their stories because they were amongst peers who had stories very similar to theirs. All of that advocacy work stopped in 2018 when this government fired the provincial advocate for children. That was really, really unfortunate.

We really didn’t get much from the government after that. We know that, under the children’s file, the autism file exploded. We’ve seen a minister who capped funding, who put age caps in, who really took away a brand new program that had just been put into place and was still working its way in. It wasn’t a perfect program, but it was a pretty decent program that would have seen many more children be able to access services through the autism file. But the same minister at that time blew that up, because it was a Liberal plan and thought that they could do better when, quite frankly, what it did was it collapsed the system even further. Less kids were in service and just did not get what they needed. So they cut the ministry, then they cut the provincial advocate, and they’ve allowed children to just kind of coast as it is.

Bringing it up to today, I’ll go back to the children’s aid societies. For the first time in history, children’s aid societies right across this province are running deficits. Last year, they saw a $15.6-million deficit. For the year coming forward, they’re projecting a $50-million deficit. For the $15.6 million from last year, the government did a one-time bailout, and now, children’s aid societies this year have no idea what that’s going to look like.

So you can imagine the children’s aid—their mandate, their mission, is to keep kids at home with their families, to the best of their ability, but to do that costs money. To do that, they have to ensure that services are available when families are in crisis. Mental health, complex critical care, stress levels: These are the types of things that we’ve seen young people face, which are some of the reasons why they’re taken away from their families. So a family is struggling, the young person has some mental health issues, mom and dad are scrambling to be able to get them services and they’re just not able to.

We know we have 30,000 kids on wait-lists for mental health services in this province and a two-and-a-half-year wait-list. So when a family is not able to get those services and they find themselves in crisis—because when there’s part of the family that’s broken down, as you know, it affects the entire family, not just that child. It affects the entire family structure. There can be siblings who are affected. We’ve heard many stories in several different situations.

Families sometimes find themselves going to children’s aid saying, “Please help me. Take my child. Please get them the services they need. Help our family heal and help us get back on track.” So we see those kids go into care, and they still don’t get the services, because there’s no prioritization for those kids who go into care. That was something that was asked for throughout the amendment process of this bill, but the government shot it down and didn’t think it was important to pass that amendment.

That is a really important piece. Making sure that someone who’s in care—their family is already in crisis. That they’re hitting that priority list, I think, is something that should be fundamental. No child should be separated from their family if there’s no risk to that child: It’s not an abuse case; there’s nothing where the parent is doing harm to the child; everybody is trying to work together, but there’s a health issue in the middle that’s preventing that family from being healthy and safe. To not help that family in their biggest time of crisis—I just think it’s a really big missed opportunity, as well as an extra expense that we already know the children’s aid can’t manage. Like I said, they’re running deficits. That was something that I think was a missed opportunity in Bill 188.

Maybe I should back up a bit. What Bill 188 actually does is it provides legislation that the young person has to be notified of the Ombudsman and that—oh, my goodness; I’ve got so many papers, too many papers. They have to be notified of the Ombudsman and be told how to reach the Ombudsman. Now, that was something that was already in place, but I guess the minister felt that it wasn’t strong enough, and so it’s put into legislation.

What else it does is that it closes the CPIN file so that no one can just punch in a person’s name and have their name pop up and see that they were in the children’s aid society for any portion of time in their life. This is critically important, and I congratulate Jane Kovarikova and Child Welfare PAC, who worked really hard to get that legislation before us and to make that come true.

Imagine being a young person. We were all young people. We all did things that we’re probably not proud of. It could be a big thing; it could be a small thing. But everything is written into a person’s file by a third party, by another adult. And then when that person is possibly trying to get a job within the children’s aid society, maybe they want to adopt a child, anything for any reason, the person’s name can be typed in and come up and then, all of a sudden, you’re a red flag because you’ve been a kid in care.

These aren’t criminals. They’re kids who were taken from their family for whatever reason, and they should not be treated in any way that reflects the fact that they were in care. Even if a youth has a criminal record, that record is sealed at the age of 18, and so now, today, due to this legislation, that will seal those records, which is super important.

What this bill also does is that it strengthens the licensing act for group homes—critically important to ensure that there are heavier fines and that there is possible jail time for those who offend against children who are put into group homes.

If we get into the group home section of what group homes are like today, I can tell you that adding 20 inspectors, which is important, is not going to be enough. It’s not going to be enough to actually change the land of the group homes.

We know that there are so many for-profit, unlicensed group homes in the province of Ontar io, and we have heard horror stories come from those homes. One of the amendments that we had asked for to strengthen that was to ensure that, when an inspector does go to a home, the kids are home. That’s not much to ask for. There’s no sense in going at 11 o’clock in the morning when the kids are all expected to be in school, right? To ensure that a young person is able to speak in privacy when that inspector was there, instead of having fear of reprisal and being scared to speak out in front of, possibly, whoever works in the group home; to ensure that people who work in group homes actually have credentials, because we’ve seen and we’ve heard—right in Hamilton—young people working in group homes. One story was of this young woman, barely 20, in charge of 15-, 16-year-old boys who really ran over her and did whatever they wanted. But there was talk about appropriate clothing of the young woman and appropriate behaviour of the young woman.

This is a young woman who’s applied for a job, and it’s our responsibility as adults and as legislators to ensure that the people who apply for those jobs and the people who get those jobs have the proper credentials, understand youth with mental health, understand the lay of the land, are able to have a control system and an adult-over-child capacity in group homes like this. Instead, the house was complete chaos at all times of the day, with many complaints from the neighbourhood and the community about what they’ve seen and what concerned them from that home. So that’s a prime example.

We also know of group homes who have locked windows. They have removed doors from bedrooms. We have seen fires. We have seen deaths. We have had young people die by suicide and been missing for six months and nobody looked for them. That was just pretty much on the same property back in a field. These are the things that we have seen in our group homes.

So just to add 20 inspectors and no actual teeth around them, other than a fine—by the time you get to a fine, it’s too late. It’s reactive instead of proactive. And I think that’s what we were really hoping to do. We brought several amendments forward trying to strengthen the bill, and yet, the government found it necessary, time and time again—every single one of them, actually—to vote against them.

And it’s really unfortunate because we had no issues with this bill whatsoever. Sometimes it’s just really great to work cordially together and to say, “I support this legislation,” and to be able to continue to talk positively about it, but independent officers of the Legislature as well as former youth in care had given us several ideas of where it wasn’t enough.

The Ombudsman laid it out. He literally did the work and had the amendments written out: By adding, “Where a child wants to enter into an agreement under this section and a society decides not to enter into an agreement, the child shall be informed, in language suitable to their understanding, of the existence and role of the Ombudsman of Ontario and how the Ombudsman could be contacted.” So as soon as a person goes into care, they should have an automatic, “Here you go. This is how you reach the Ombudsman,” and when you leave, just like when you leave a job, you have an exit interview—“Here’s, again, the information that you need.”

One of the other amendments that we asked for was that—and we all know this to be true: Young people aren’t necessarily picking up the phone to call anybody. They live in a digital society, right? We know that everything young people do is typically a text message or an Instagram or somewhere—and that’s how they proceed. Many young people don’t pick up the phone. Some parents will say, “My kid will never call me. The only thing I ever get is a text message.” So how do we ensure that we’re getting this information to young people and that we’re giving them the ability to text in, to send that message in and not have to pick up the phone to call, which many of them wouldn’t do. Unfortunately, the government voted that down too.

We asked for information to be given in a person’s language to ensure that the language was suitable to the young person’s needs. That was voted down. They were just amendments to tighten up the bill that was already there, to truly ensure that young people have the ability to be heard and that they had the ability to know what their rights were in their own language, and that the government voted that down I think is absolutely shocking. I offered the committee members to take a five-minute recess so they could go and confer with staff, to see if they could support an amendment like that, but they refused that also. I tried to help them, but they didn’t even want that.

“The CYFSA should be amended to require all employees of youth justice facilities to co-operate with investigations conducted by a children’s aid society”—that was a proposal that the government also turned down, and that was a request of the Ombudsman. Any time that a person comes into contact with that young person, those adults should be responsible to speak out. That was turned down by the government. That was the Ombudsman. You’re giving the Ombudsman powers, but you don’t want to give him the rules around it and the tools around those powers to be able to do his job well. I think that’s a complete missed opportunity by this government.

Really, just for the sake of, they think that they put out a bill and that it’s right—well, colleagues, how many bills have we seen put in front of us that the government has had to retract, or put a new bill forward? There have been several, and I believe the animal bill, the PAWS bill, that’s currently in front of us is another example of just exactly that. We’re watching it happen in real life right now. They had to not proclaim things, and then they’re putting forward amendments to clean up a mess that they created before.

We had told them that it was a problem, because we hear the stakeholders. We bring those voices forward. We listen to the experts. We bring those voices forward, and they shut it down. That is just more wasted time in the Ontario Legislature, wasted dollars, for the amount of time we spend in this Legislature, and really, just a big waste.

If the government would see fit to just pass one amendment, two amendments—we don’t scratch these out on the back of a napkin. We’re not sitting at night with our crayons and a bottle of wine making stuff up, trying to get the government to pass these things. We’re actually getting these amendments from the Ombudsman, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Ontario children’s aid societies. People had real things to say.

Like I said, it has been since 2017 that the act has even been opened, so this was the opportunity to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, give the Ombudsman what he needs to do his job, and they did not.

We also asked that we stop the for-profit sector of group homes, and the government shot that down. We asked that children not be placed in hotel rooms, Airbnbs, children’s aid society offices and for-profit, unlicensed group homes, and the government shot that down. Why? Why is the question.

Let’s remember again, the children’s aids are underfunded. A kin care family could be the grandparents or the aunts and uncles of a young person, and they may very well not have the means to be able to take in a kid—their grandchild or niece or nephew or whatever it may be. There may be a need for beds, cribs, school clothes, extra food in the house. We all know the cost of living has certainly ballooned and people’s paycheques have not, particularly for grandparents. We know grandparents are struggling. Pensions haven’t gone up, and yet the cost of living has. Those families are not afforded the same amount as a foster family would be. A foster family, I believe, gets $1,000 a month; a kin care family gets $300. So we’re kind of alienating those possibilities because the family can’t afford it. What happens is, those kids come into care, we have no foster placements, because the lack of work that’s done to build community around vulnerable kids—does not exist. It does not exist—to build that community care and to find places to be able to care for our kids.

Interruption.

Further debate?

This petition is in memory of Rona Ramsey from Naughton in my riding, and it’s for an MS specialized clinic in Sudbury. We have a centre of hope called the Rona Ramsey centre of hope in Sudbury that Rona Ramsey funded, basically because northern Ontario has the highest rates of multiple sclerosis in all of Ontario.

Many people who live with multiple sclerosis, and their families, have a hard time gaining access to the care they need to treat their disease and stay as active as possible. They would like an MS clinic to be set up in the northeast—more specifically, in Sudbury—to serve the people of the northeast.

Many, many people have signed this petition, especially in honour of Rona Ramsey, who was very active on this file.

I support this petition. I will affix my name to it and ask page Sophia to bring it to the Clerk.

Resuming the debate adjourned on May 29, 2024, on the motion for third 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.

Sorry about that. Sorry, broadcast.

So that’s a problem, right? Instead, we literally have a young person with autism who is sleeping in a children’s aid office currently, right now.

CUPE did a full report. They did a survey of their members to discuss, to find out data, because this government refuses to collect data when it comes to kids in care and to track outcomes—a huge failure. That was something else we asked for; the government shot it down. How important it is to know where you come from and the struggles that you face to improve it for the future—you can’t do that if you don’t have actual data, and this government does not collect data.

So CUPE surveyed workers at 27 agencies and received responses from 20 of them. The survey found, “Every single agency that responded has placed a child or youth in an unlicensed home in the last 12 months, with the vast majority having used unlicensed homes multiple times.

“Three agencies had placed children as young as five in hotels and motels.”

Let’s talk about living in a hotel and motel. There is no ability to cook a proper, healthy meal. It’s just not happening, right? So we have children’s aid workers who are being full-time caregivers in hotel rooms, scrambling to try to give this child—who is already in crisis, could possibly have traumas, possibly have mental health, possibly have complex care—a proper home in a motel room.

We’re now putting them further at risk of trafficking, of drug consumption—just all of the things that a young person shouldn’t be tossed into, and it’s happening. “Three agencies have placed children as young as five in hotels and motels.” Babies—five years old. You can’t cook them a meal. What are you going to give them, an iPad and a TV? What is their life in a hotel room? Garbage—that’s what it is. But they didn’t want to stop it.

“Three agencies have placed children or youth in CAS offices.” As I just said, currently we have a young person today who has been there for months already, with autism, in a one-room hotel room.

Alone?

No, they have a children’s aid worker with them. But there’s no continuity. Children’s aid workers are turning over; people are changing shifts. We already know the young people with autism are struggling and at high risk, and we’re putting them in CAS offices.

“Workers in nine agencies said that children in unlicensed homes do not receive the mental health treatment and other support they need to thrive.” So they’re in an unlicensed home. We have no real regulation over what’s happening to them, because they’re a for-profit typically, and they’re not receiving the mental health treatment or other supports they need to thrive. This is how we treat our most vulnerable children. These are the children who the government is responsible for. They are their parents. I cannot stress that enough.

“Some examples from the last 12 months:

“—20 children as young as five years old in Brant, Norfolk and Haldimand counties;

“—more than 10 children in Windsor;

“—five children and youth in Frontenac-Lennox;

“—five children and youth in Nipissing-North Bay have been placed in unlicensed homes.”

Their solution was, “Pass legislation that prohibits the use of unlicensed placements for children.” We tried; they said no.

“Consult with service providers and workers during funding model redesign to account for cost of upstream interventions.” That piece is critical moving forward—absolutely critical, to change the funding formula and the way that children’s aid societies are funded, because they can’t continue to live in deficits and to have bailouts. They have capital costs; they have maintenance costs. They have to be able to retain staff. They have to be able to build community around kids so that we have foster parents.

“Expedite the licensing process for foster homes and new treatment facilities.” Actual, real licences—expedite them. Make sure that they have that process in place and that there is oversight and regulation.

“End the privatization of care providers”—absolutely so critical.

I want to talk about some of the comments that we’ve heard in regard to kids in care. This came from an article that I read into the Hansard in second reading, but it’s important that we continue to talk about this and that we continue to push the government to stop the for-profit model.

Connor Homes: I don’t know if they’re millionaires or billionaires, but they have so much money, they call kids cash cows. They call them paycheques. Imagine, “paycheques”—they’re children who have been taken away from their homes, who are living lives of trauma already. Cash cows and paycheques—that’s why we need to take it out of there.

There were stories that, for Christmas, kids would get a little bit of clothing for Christmas and no other gifts. The lack of real food in the home, the nutritional value just was not there, because the unlicensed are unregulated. You’re giving them to the wolves and expecting these poor, young, defenceless children to survive. We’ve seen the human trafficking of these children, abuse—I’ll say it again—death. If they make it through, sometimes they’re just taking their own lives and dying by suicide because they can’t take it.

This is the scenario that you refused to address under this. You’ve had recommendations from all of these folks for quite some time that could have been addressed in this bill, that we haven’t addressed in years, and you refused to do it. You did some minor changes, great that they are, but they do not change the safety of kids in care. They do not change the safety. They protect the person as an adult when it comes to privacy—perfect, as they should. But jeez, I’d hate to read some of those files of kids who have been living in these unlicensed care providers and what was said about them.

One of the other things that was asked for was by a former youth in care who came to depute in front of us. She said that when she was 15 or 16—I can’t remember; it was right around that age. She was at the society. She was in a meeting. They offered her lunch. She said, “I was in a bad mood, and I wasn’t happy, so I refused lunch.” In her report that she read all those years later, it said that she had an eating disorder. She had an eating disorder because she refused lunch that day. She says, “I remember the day exactly.” She says, “I was in a bad mood. I was mad at them. I wasn’t going to eat their lunch, and I didn’t want it.” So all of a sudden, they write in her file—that’s in her file for the rest of her life—that she has an eating disorder.

And it took her months and months and months and months and months to be able to get her own file. That was one of the amendments also, that youth, after they’ve left care, should have the right to their files. When they get their files, if they ever get them, it’s highly redacted. There’s much information that they would claim is false and not true. They were asking, first, to be able to get their file, that it not be redacted and that they have the ability to edit their file. Now, we know that if changes come into the medical sector, all of the information is still there—it’s crossed out, but you can still see it—and the new information is added. That’s what we were asking for. The government said no—no. It’s this person’s life, she lived it, and anybody can write anything they want and nobody is able to change that or to fix it or maybe even see it? How does that seem possibly right or fair in any manner? It doesn’t.

So, once again, youth in care or youth from care, young people who have lived in care, are punished. They’re punished for not doing anything wrong. They’re punished for getting stuck in a situation that they didn’t ask for. That’s not okay—not okay at all.

Part of the bill that I was happy to see was that there would be a child-centred focus and that there would be whistle-blower protection. Both of those things I had private member’s for in this chamber and so I was happy to see some of it enrolled in here. I think that whistle-blower protection is very important for people in the workforce who are working there and are afraid of losing their jobs if they see things that aren’t right, and so I was very happy to see that.

The other piece that I think—I guess I would say it goes under the lack of funding and the lack of homes that are available—would encounter the story of Mia. Mia is 16 years old—was 16 years old. She was struggling at home; home life was not good. She had asked to be in care. It’s got to be bad for a kid to ask to be in care. She wanted to be in care. She wanted to have a safe home. She wanted to go to school.

The children’s aid denied her. They denied her because they probably didn’t have funding and they had nowhere to put her. So they dropped her off at a shelter, at a youth shelter, and kind of said, “Here you go. This is where you’re going to fend for yourself.” And a couple of months later, Mia died. It was a kid who was asking for the help from her government which she should be entitled to. Now, Mia’s no longer with us because she was failed. She was failed by the system that has a duty to protect her.

When we ask for changes within the child welfare sector, we’re asking for a reason. We’ve asked for changes because something has gone wrong. We shouldn’t have to just always react to everything. There should be proactive measures in place to re-look at things, to re-evaluate, and then to instantly change it, to get it in, to get it done and move forward so that nothing like that happens again.

But that doesn’t happen here. We see it time and time again, where people are left to fend for themselves. And we can’t expect kids to fend for themselves when they’re kids. We don’t expect it from our own kids. We’re at home taking care of our kids. We cook them dinners and make sure their clothes are washed and that they’re keeping their rooms clean. But we don’t see any of that when it comes to our most vulnerable children and youth, and that is the responsibility of the government, to make sure that kids in care have what they need.

The government will say that they put $170 million in, I believe, but that’s for a new program. That’s for the Ready, Set, Go Program. That’s to start kids at the age of 13 to be able to ready themselves to get out into the world, because once they become 18, unless they’re in school, they’re out. They don’t have a parent to fall back on, to help them—to help them learn how to drive a car or just give them that parental advice that we give all of our kids to the best of our ability. They have no one to ask.

The Ready, Set, Go Program is a really important program. I think it’s great that it’s in place, but that can’t be the only measure. We can’t underfund all the rest of the sector of the children’s aid societies just because we’re educating kids to be adults. It’s a great step forward, but while they’re there, we still need to make sure that they have safe housing that’s protecting them and that they’re not being called cash cows, because that is probably one of the most horrifying things that I have ever heard. And it is a reality. That is what happens in a for-profit system, because people are more concerned about the dollars that they’re making instead of the kids that they’re actually supposed to be representing and protecting.

I heard another story not that long ago from someone who works in a group home. They had a young Indigenous girl in the group home. She was just starting to function. She had made a friend. For the first time, she had someone who she was bonding with, and they were thriving. The home received a call that said, “Tell so-and-so to pack her bags. We’re on our way.” They showed up, and she literally had to pack what she had and was taken out of there and sent to a shelter because they didn’t have any more funding to be able to keep her in that home any longer—this, again, is a for-profit system.

If we’re basing how we treat our kids in care by how much money the children’s aid societies have, and we’re leaving them in deficits—you can see where I’m going, right? I mean, it takes money to be able to run these systems and to protect kids. It can’t be the ministry that constantly gets cut. It just—you can’t do it. You have to fund the children’s aid societies appropriately.

The OACAS says:

“Addressing the legislative gaps, such as:

“—urgent basis placements of 16- and 17-year-olds who do not have the capacity. The CYFSA does not provide a mechanism to commence a protection application on an urgent basis for youth over the age of 16.

“—emergency medical decisions for children and youth that are brought into care during the initial five-day period prior to the removal hearing.”

So this addresses the fact, again, of making sure that there’s proactive work done.

The medical decisions: We’ve heard of complex care kids, critical care kids, critical medical health care kids that are removed from families and put into care. This is another story that I heard directly from a family: Mom is at home. She’s trying to care for her kid. The child has very high needs, needs nurses around the clock to come into the house. They’re struggling to get these nurses into the homes at the cost of now what it costs to get a nurse into a home because they’re coming from temp agencies. So the cost for those nurses has ballooned, but the complex care money has not, so mom keeps running out of money. So she’s struggling. She’s trying to get help. She’s trying to make sure that she has enough money to keep these nurses into the home and keep her kid breathing.

They took her kid from her because she wasn’t able to provide that care, and it went on for quite some time. I actually haven’t had an update from that family in a while, but they literally took the kid because mom wasn’t able to afford that complex care and those nurses that had ballooned out of control under this government. The kid was taken into care—but then it just became the cost of the children’s aid, to be able to manage those costs, which was a problem and which they had a very difficult time doing. So that’s just a prime example of not providing supports at home.

The Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada said to increase investments in mental health supports for children and youth in care, and implement a comprehensive mental health strategy to help improve health outcomes after care for those who have left care.

Investing in a person’s mental health is a great investment to ensure that they have the ability for better outcomes. So I think that we should be doing that. But we know that mental health care waits in this province are two-plus years, for people to be able to access that care. So that doesn’t really work, nor does it help support the family or the kid.

The Child Development Institute said to consider creating a regulatory college for child and youth care workers, as this would enhance oversight and training. We put an amendment forward for this, and the government turned it down. I think that it’s an important piece—to be able to have a mechanism in place, as a college; to be able to have that complaint process; to be able to have the oversight; to be able to have the regulatory body to oversee social workers for youth in care. The government turned it down.

A young woman with lived experience said to consider measures to ensure family cohesion, especially among siblings in care, who can be unique sources of support for each other; and implement a comprehensive mental health strategy to help improve health outcomes after care for those who have left care. That’s the same as what the Child Development Institute had asked for.

We heard about mental health quite often from the hearings, and yet it all fell on deaf ears with the government.

Making sure that siblings have the ability to see each other, to spend time together, to keep that family network together, to keep that family support structure together is so important. There’s nothing more important than siblings, as they’re growing up, especially if siblings are struggling in a family that is not doing well.

Victim Services Toronto said to consider measures to address human trafficking of children and youth in care—none of that was addressed in Bill 188, which was definitely a missed opportunity; consider measures to ensure family cohesion—like I said, this other person also said that; and regularly engage with children and youth in care to give them a voice as to their needs and experiences and ensure a child-centred system.

There’s nothing more important than a child-centred system—not members who refuse to listen because they think they know everything best, but really having the ability to make changes when changes are necessary, and to listen to proactive measures that our community with lived experience brings forward.

It’s mind-blowing that they refused to listen to the Ombudsman’s request, the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s request, the OACAS request. All of these people who the minister said they worked with throughout the bill—and maybe they did; I can’t dispute that. I have no proof, nor would I, so I’m not going to say that they didn’t talk to them; they probably did. But after talking to them, they never heard from them again, and then the bill’s in front of them, and they’ve seen pieces that should have been there and they were rejected.

So if you’re actually saying that you want to work with communities and you care about the voices of these people who brought their experience forward, why would you shoot down every amendment that they asked for?

Quite frankly, the government should have brought forward their own amendments with the voice of the Ombudsman and the information privacy—the government is asking the Ombudsman to increase their abilities and their roles and yet refuses to give them the tools to do so. It doesn’t make sense. It is not in the best interests of the child, by no means.

It’s very minimal, the cost that would have been associated to that. Every kid who comes into care meets with a worker right away, so that was one of the asks: at that initial meeting, to make sure that child knows who the Ombudsman is, information about the Ombudsman—and written in children’s language, not written as something that we see in legislation. How do we talk to kids in their age appropriateness? That would have been important. Speaking to them in the language that makes sense to them—that would be important. Giving them the tools to say, “You can text the Ombudsman at this number. You can text a complaint or you can text a concern to this number,” because young people are digital. We live in a digital era. This is how our young people connect.

But instead of taking the Ombudsman on his word of what he needed to be able to do his job, they turned it down. That was probably one of the most mind-blowing ones to me. Do I expect them to turn down the not-for-profit? Absolutely. I expect that all day long from the Conservatives. They believe in a for-profit system. They believe in our health care being privatized. We’re seeing it across the board. So I expect them to turn down amendments like stopping the profit, like stopping them from calling kids “cash cows.” But I expect it. I expect it.

But something like that? The government should have had their own amendment to the bill. You don’t always get it right the first time, and you’ve had plenty of legislation throughout this House, time and time and time again, to prove that you certainly don’t often get it right the first time.

The members, we know that when they go into committee, they already have their marching orders. They know exactly what they’re going to do. It’s all laid out in a plan in front of them. I asked for a five-minute recess so that they could go and confer with the staff to see if they could accept this amendment. And they said no to the five-minute recess, probably because it was almost lunchtime or something and they were in a rush. I don’t know. It really was that time of the session—

Thank you, Speaker.

I mean, I have no idea why the government refused to accept amendments that would just make their bill better.

I have said all the way along, Bill 188 is good. It’s good steps in the right direction. Does it go far enough? No. Will any bill ever go far enough? No. But we could have made the vital effort. We could have made those small changes that had been asked for by people who lived in care, who work in care, who are independent officers of this Legislature, to strengthen the bill, so then, when the bill passed, I could have walked over and shaken the minister’s hand and said, “Good job.”

But instead, everything becomes partisan, and it makes everybody angry, and it makes everybody feel like they’re left out and let down.

We have former youth in care who have worked for this government—literally worked for ministers. I see her in the hallways. I hug her. I know her from her advocacy. She was one of the people who came and spoke to us and had asks about her privacy and about her ability to read her own file and her ability to change it. She works for you guys half the time, and it still was a no. It was a no.

These are important things to youth in care. And unless you’ve had to live that and be a part of that, I guess you never know how it feels, right? I mean, I did not, but I remember I had foster brothers and sisters. My parents always had kids in care living with us, and I remember the struggles—now, when I look back; as a kid we didn’t know. We all played together. She babysat us. She gave us the best bubble baths ever.

It’s just really unfortunate that these important voices that took the time to submit to committee, to come to committee, to spill their hearts to committee of what it felt like and what they’re asking for and what they needed, the ability to tell their own story—that’s what they want. They want the ability to tell their own stories and that it be factual, not based on how somebody else felt because you didn’t eat your lunch, so you’ve got an eating disorder. That’s not okay. That’s not okay for somebody to read about themselves.

Like I said, I really wish that I would have had the opportunity to, when this bill passed, to walk over to the minister and say, “Good job, you did it. Well done.” But, instead, I’m going to say, “It was all right, Minister. You did okay, but you could have done better. You could have done better.” It’s a fact. We could have done better. We could have done better by working together, by including the voices of people that are experienced in the child welfare sector, not in political action.

That’s my hour, and so I appreciate the opportunity that I’ve had to work on this bill. I thank all of the voices who came to us, who sent their submissions, who tried to make this bill better.

We won’t give up. We will continue to fight until the day that our child welfare sector actually truly serves the children of this province to the best of its ability and that we can always ensure that when a child or a family is in need, that they have a safe home, that we know we can count on, we can put our kids there safely, not because we want to, but because it’s necessary and the government has a duty to protect them. Hopefully, we’ll one day get to that day.

I apologize to the member from Hamilton Mountain. I recognize the member from Essex.

It’s now time for questions and answers.

I want to thank the member from Hamilton Mountain for your speech today, and I’m so glad that you are the critic of children, community and social services, because it’s obvious from the member’s speech that she has a real passion for defending children, and especially for fighting for children in care and making sure that they get the best opportunities that are possible.

Currently, you also described—there were a number of anecdotes, but one that stuck out for me is that you were talking about a child with autism who’s staying in a children’s aid office, I believe. Could you just talk about how that happened and how we fix that? How do we make sure that every child in care is actually in an appropriate home?

Understanding that Bill 188, the Supporting Children’s Futures Act, will not be our final bill with MCCSC, I just wanted to touch upon the Ready, Set, Go Program. On April 20, 2021, the Leader of the Opposition stated, “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 understood the challenge, and that’s why we launched the Ready, Set, Go Program, a program for youth leaving care across the province to set them up for success until the age of 23. When approval of that measure came up for a vote in this House, every single member of the opposition present voted against it. Does the member opposite now regret this?

To the member from Hamilton Mountain: Thank you very much for your speech here today. I can tell there was a lot of feeling there, so thank you.

When the Fostering Privacy Fairness Act, which contained many of the same privacy measures as in this bill, came up in debate in 2021, the Leader of the Opposition said, “It perhaps goes without saying, Speaker, that children end up in the system through no choice of their own, and they should be protected accordingly. But then, as adults, they find that their personal information can be accessed. This has been proven repeatedly to be a barrier as they enter into adulthood, seek jobs and so on.”

My question: Does the member agree with the sentiment from here and what this bill is doing now?

I want to commend the member from Hamilton Mountain. Of course, it’s not an easy feat to speak that long on a piece of legislation, and she was able to complete that—

Interjections.

She did indicate that she did support a piece of the legislation which was on the privacy aspect. I was in committee while she was there, and we heard three deputations where that was supported.

My question is a very simple one: Is she going to support this piece of legislation and move it forward after she was able to air her concerns?

Absolutely. That’s a great thing about this bill. I commend everyone who worked on that—Jane Kovarikova from Child Welfare PAC. This has been going on for years. I’ve been meeting with Child Welfare PAC for years as the critic under this file and so, yes, I applaud that being here. There are measures that are missing under that same piece. Yes, they should have—but they need to have access to their files. They need to have self-access to the files, and they need to be able to correct their files when they know that there’s something seriously not right in it.

That’s absolutely egregious that we see that in the province of Ontario, and it starts with a lack of services right from the start with the autism services.

I wonder if the member regrets his vote against the amendments from the Ombudsman and from the Information and Privacy Commissioner. That member was one of the members who voted against every amendment that was brought forward to this legislation. The question goes back: Does he regret voting against kids at that time?

I’m interested in whether there is space in the bill—any indication of a return of the Child and Youth Advocate. The reason I’m asking about this was because I had the privilege of attending an event sponsored by the Child and Youth Advocate. At this event were all kinds of leaders, community leaders, who were sitting around the table, and a group of young people who had been working together on a program called Feathers of Hope came and shared poetry, skits, talks, talked about their lives. The purpose was, really, to inform the leadership of their experiences. It was an opportunity to give them voice and it was very powerful.

So my question is, do you recognize the importance of the child and youth advocate and are you optimistic that that position can return?

The legislation we’re discussing today already enshrines that a child is to be informed in the language suitable to their understanding. It’s enshrined in section 3, again in section 9 and again repeated in section 65 and section 171. So why would you want to amend something when it’s already doing—

I’ll be sharing my time with the member from Mississauga Centre.

This is one of those bills that, when I first looked at getting involved in politics, was something that I thought had a great deal of value and something that we should be doing. I really do commend the minister for this.

We’ve taken a look at some of the challenges that we have in child protective services, in the CAS, in foster care, and we’ve looked at how we can ensure that every child, no matter the situation they come from early on in their life, has an opportunity to succeed. I have to commend the minister on this because he’s done some excellent things.

One thing that I really think hasn’t gotten an awful lot of conversation about that we have to really point out is increasing the age from 21 to 23. The reason I say that: There are so many things that we do in government, there are so many things that we do in society, and we look at it and we’ve taken that arbitrary age—typically, it’s 18—and we’ve said, “Once you hit 18, something changes. A switch is flipped.”

But the reality is, every one of us matures at a different rate at different stages of our lives. By increasing it from 21 to 23, what we’re recognizing is that sometimes your chronological age of 21 doesn’t actually match your emotional age, and by increasing it to 23—yes, it is still a chronological age. But what it’s doing is, it’s giving the ability, then, to recognize that some of those individuals who have had traumatic experiences, who have been through different situations that maybe none of us actually truly understand—their emotional state may not put them in that same position as if they were coming from a more well-off family that has provided all kinds of supports for their kids. We’re recognizing that every child in this province deserves to have that opportunity to succeed, and the difference between age 21 and age 23 isn’t that great when we’re talking about the number of days, but it could make a massive difference in someone’s life.

I have three kids, and my kids all matured at different rates, as well. One daughter was ready to be on her own at 18. Another daughter of mine probably wasn’t ready to be on her own until she was 20. My son is 26 and still lives in my basement, but he is a kindergarten teacher and he is trying to move on. And he’s not in the basement because of his emotional state; it’s because his mother doesn’t want him to move out.

There are so many things that we take for granted as parents, and one of them, in particular, that I want to touch on is, I don’t have a scorecard or a spreadsheet or a filing cabinet in my house where I have kept track and documented everything that my kids did. I can’t go to the filing cabinet and pull something out and say, “On January 21, 2017, here’s what you did, and here’s what our reaction was to it”—but our child protective services, our CASs, actually do have that. And the ability, then, as an adult, once you’ve left the system, to know that everything you did that was documented, that was put down on paper is not going to be held against you, I think, is one of the most valuable things.

We take a look at social media now—and I’ve seen this talked about a number of times. I was born in the 1970s, but I really was an 1980s kid, in terms of what I did. All the things I did as a child, all the things I did as a teenager are not documented and put on the Internet. We’ve got kids today who, through no fault of their own, were placed in protective services; the CAS was involved. They were taken to a foster home—trying to give them something of a better life. And yet, we documented all of that stuff, and that was made available. What this bill does—one of the key things for me is, it takes that away. The things that you did once—you have the right for it to be forgotten. That’s something that’s enshrined in this bill, and I think it’s very, very important that it is.

We’ve made some changes to child protective services workers and police, so that someone who has been human-trafficked at the age of 16 or 17 can be taken from that situation and can then be given an opportunity to improve their lives.

There has been a lot of conversation about sex crimes over the last six years, and even before. The member from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock introduced a private member’s bill—Saving the Girl Next Door—bringing some of that to light, and one of the scariest statistics on it is that the average age of a girl who has been human-trafficked is 12 years old. In Ontario, that is going on. Making it so that the police and social workers have more tools to help rescue some of those young women, to give them that opportunity to actually have a meaningful and fulfilling life, and to escape some of those challenges—that’s something that is enshrined in this bill, and I think it is something that is very, very powerful.

One of the things that I was surprised on, but the chief of staff for MCCSS talked to me about it a few times: She was not allowed to talk about her experiences, her own lived experiences, because she was someone who was in a foster home, and this changes that, so that those individuals who have gone through the system, who have had other issues while they were in the system, have the ability—without breaking the law—of standing up and saying, “This is what my lived experience was.”

When you think about that, every other aspect of our lives, you’re allowed to stand up and say, “This is what happened to me.” But for the longest time, that was not something that was afforded to an individual who was in foster care. These kinds of changes are transformational for a lot of these individuals. There’s nothing wrong with someone standing up and saying, “I was in foster care. Here’s what I went through. Here’s how I have succeeded in life, and I can be a role model for someone else”—but the law prevented them from doing that, previously.

We’ve talked so much—our society has talked so much about lived experiences and being able to be that role model, being able to stand up and say, “It is possible for you to break that cycle. It is possible for you to aspire to something better. It is possible for you to live a fulfilling life.” When it came to kids in foster care, we didn’t let them say that.

Think about that powerful message. Think about that child who perhaps was sex-trafficked, who got pulled out of that system, who got put into a supportive foster care position, who grew up, who got to take advantage of Ready, Set, Go, who got a great education, who then continued to give back to the community, who was that positive example and they weren’t allowed to talk about it—they will be able to now.

How many more kids, then, in protective services, through foster care, are going to be able to look to those individuals and say, “I want to be like you. I want to be like Jane. I want to be in the position to succeed just like she is”? That’s what this legislation does, and that is why it is so powerful, because it is transformational for so many of these kids.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to turn my time over to the member from Mississauga Centre.

Thank you to the member from Thunder Bay. Yes, the advocate was one of the greatest offices and advocates that the children of Ontario could possibly have had.

I was also at that table, Feathers of Hope, in Thunder Bay a few years back and heard those voices and the pleas for help from those young people to hear what they had to say. We’ve seen so many young people die on the streets of Thunder Bay, and the lack of what’s been done still to date continues to provide ill fate for those young people.

There is nothing more that I would like than to see the child advocate’s office be re-implemented to ensure that children, regardless of where you fit in, will have a voice and an advocate and peers around them to be able to support—

Interjection.

Further questions?