It is always a pleasure to be able to stand in my place as the official opposition critic for children, community and social services and to be able to lay out a few questions to the minister regarding the bill, as we’re now in third reading.

Through the committee process, we had several people who provided written submissions, who came and testified, who spoke to us, ensuring that their voices were heard and that their comments were heard. We heard from the Ombudsman, who had several requests and even provided the language of what the amendments could be for making Bill 188 better. Some of it was making sure that there was contact info provided in and out; digital; appropriate language; speaking to young people in their own terms—the government refused those amendments.

Could the minister please tell us why—

Signing a consent form is nothing new. That could have been put into place, but again, the government turned that down. Why did the government continue to once again turn down an independent officer of the Legislature?

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.

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?