You know what are facts, Madam Speaker? Let me actually talk about facts, okay? The facts are, Madam Speaker, that we have increased funding—I just mentioned that: $170 million over three years to support children and youth. Maybe that’s not important to the opposition; it is to us.

We want to make sure every child, every youth is set up for success, which is why we backed that up by investment. We wanted that support to start as early as 13 all the way up to their 23rd birthday with incentive and support so they can get post-secondary education, they can be connected to the trades, whatever it is they want to explore, because we want to make sure every child and youth in this province is set up for success.

Whether you’re in care or not, your circumstances matter. We’ll keep fighting for you to make sure you have a chance to succeed in your community.

I appreciated the remarks of the government members on this bill, which we on this side of the House have been clear that we support because it does take some modest action to improve protections for children and youth.

However, many of the concerns that this bill addresses and more—a huge number more of concerns—were identified by the former child and youth advocate in this province, Irwin Elman. He points out that there are 19,000 serious occurrence reports every quarter that are produced by group residential homes. And one of his primary roles was to address those serious occurrence reports.

So why did the government not take the opportunity to reinstate that vital position of child and youth advocate?

I will be happy to be supporting this bill. I’m happy that we all agree with the end goal. We all want children in care to receive the best possible support, to be given the chance to be all that they can be, to be loved, to be supported, to be cared for. This is what we all want.

But I also know, Speaker, that I have been in this place for a long time. Legislation is not a process that goes in increments. A new law is passed, and we probably will not pass another law that has to do with children in care for years.

So when, finally, people saw that there was a bill on the docket to amend the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, to do what we all wanted to do, many people came forward. I can tell you that the great majority of the people that came forward supported the bill and gave examples of how we can make it better. They understood what the government wanted to do. They understood the part of the bill that was up for debate and up for change, and they said, “You are going in the right direction. Just bring it a little bit further.” People with lived experience came and did testimony after testimony, telling us that it’s not enough to have a good goal in mind, it’s not enough to look at a bill and not take the opportunity to make it as good as it could be, so we did. We listened to them, and I would say that on all sides, people listened to the testimony and the questions that were asked were good. It was respectful, and we learned an awful lot.

Kemesha Alli came. She is the board chair of people with disabilities, and she shared really, really hard stories. She was in care. She had a disability, but she faced insecurity, fear, neglect, abuse, trauma, multiple placements, and when she finally had her appointment at SickKids where she was diagnosed with a serious disability, her foster parents did not even come. She had the hospital hold her back for about an hour to get a social worker from the hospital so that they could share with her the results of the investigation that SickKids had done. Then she went on to say about all of this stuff that was in her file at the children’s aid that 1,000 people can have access to, but that she cannot, and even with the changes that we have made in the bill, there will still be issues.

We have Nicole Bonnie. She worked in the field for 15 years as a social worker. She has a PhD from Western University. She is the CEO of the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies and has worked with marginalized children and youth in care with all aspects of vulnerability. Again, she talked about the privacy breach that happens and that is at risk of continuing to happen if we don’t make this bill stronger, but we tried. We put 16 amendments forward—all of them were voted down. Although we all want the same thing, we don’t want privacy breaches. We want to make sure that the files of children in care are protected. They knew how to make the bill better, but the government did not agree.

We also had Kemesha Alli. She is the executive director of former youth in care, and she talked about the difficulty accessing resources. We had Victoria Hanton. Victoria is a lawyer, and she went through the bill with us and talked about the gaps in the legislation the way it is written now, particularly from a third party that would continue to have access into the file and how the limited ways that a child in care, who may grow out of care, cannot defend themselves. She talked about unverified information that will continue to be available to 1,000 child care workers and the necessity for safety not only for children in care, for foster children, and she went on to talk about abuse and neglect and how children in care should have the same rights.

She is the first one who made the link between how we have a way to protect the information of youth in the offenders’ act. Basically, the offenders’ act is very clear that nobody gets access to your file unless the court says, “Yes, we will release the file of a young offender.” She wanted the same level of protection to be given to children in care, to be given and to be written into the Supporting Children’s Futures Act. We made those amendments, and they were voted down.

We had Meaghan Martin. Meaghan has been an advocate since 1985, and in 2004, she decided to share her story. She said that when she first requested a copy of her file from being a child in children’s aid, she got a five-page summary document. It took her many, many years to get all 1,500 pages of her document. She is the one who shared with us the story that she remembered very well, where the children’s aid worker was there and they offered her a lunch, and she said no to her lunch, and she was diagnosed by a social worker working for children’s aid as having an eating disorder because she did not want to have lunch that day, because she was not happy with the interaction she was having with her children’s aid worker. That happened in 1989, at a meeting with the CAS. When she came out of care, went through all of the processes to gain access—and to try to make any changes was impossible.

Meaghan and others made the link that files are kept in the health care system all the time. Errors are made by health care workers. They work really hard to not make them. But we’re human beings; we make errors, and files are corrected all the time. You put a line in the margin, write “error,” and then write down what should have been written.

There are solutions that exist, but we put them forward in amendments, and all of them were voted down. Those are people with lived experience. Those are lawyers who came to us and said, “We all want the same goal. We all want to improve things. You have a way to make it better. Here are the flaws in what you have written up. Here’s how we can tighten this up to achieve the goal that you say you want to achieve.” But the government would not look at it.

She also gave examples of the difference between the children’s advocate and the Ombudsman. This government got rid of the children’s advocate. The children’s advocate had powers to start investigations on his own. There are not too many two-year-olds who pick up the phone and phone the Ombudsman. When there was a children’s advocate, the children’s advocate did not have to wait for a complaint to start an investigation. But the Ombudsman has to wait for a complaint to do the investigation. Once a complaint has been made, the Ombudsman has many, many tools at their disposal to do a good job, but he or she does not have the power that the children’s advocate used to have.

That was brought forward by Carly Kalish, the executive director of Victim Services Toronto. She’s also a trauma therapist, and she specializes in human trafficking. She talked a lot about the number of children in foster care who end up being trafficked. She talked about some of the changes in the regulations for oversight of foster parents that would need to be reinforced in order to make sure that we achieve the goal that we all want. But none of the recommendations that she made that we put into our amendments were taken into account by the government.

Carina Chan also came and did a deputation. Carina is from the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. She handles, mainly, post-separation disputes, foster parents, adoptive—lived experience etc. She talked a lot about the stigma—the shift in mindset that would have been good to have in the preamble of this law to help out. It’s not there.

Ann Fitzpatrick also came. Ann is a retired social worker. She has a master’s degree in social work. She works in community development to try to strengthen families, and she was very knowledgeable—lots of emotions, listening to her. What she had to say about the bill was that it had a nice title, but lots of things needed to change if we were to achieve the end goal that we wanted, if we were to achieve the privacy that we needed for an Ontario-wide system that would help.

She talked about accountability, the rules that need to be followed by foster homes, by group homes and how to monitor the outcome of the care. Many, many people focused on, “We are not monitoring the outcome of the care, and this should be done.” This should be done by gathering data, by doing analysis of this data—not only the data from the people in care, but also data from the people after they age out of care. Again, we put amendments to the bill to try to get those things done, to no avail. They were all voted down.

I could go on, but I see that the time is sort of running, isn’t it? So I’ll go on to some of the recommendations that were done.

If you look at the preamble of the bill, I would say that everybody who talked to that part of the bill, including the Ombudsman, said—and I’m quoting from the Ombudsman right now—“Affirm the Legislative Assembly’s recognition of the contribution of the cultural heritage of the French-speaking population and its wish to preserve it for future generations.” This should have been in the preamble of the bill. I mean, when people talked, everybody said that they want francophone children to be placed in francophone families and in francophone group homes, but it’s not enough to wish for it. It has to be put in legislation. The Ombudsman took the time to tell us it needs to go in, but it didn’t make it.

The Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada also shared, “Ensure the creation of a website or other mechanism for digital communication with and regarding the Ombudsman, including instantaneous digital chat and access to a trained worker. Make it youth-friendly and accessible in a format you can access and so they can understand what their legal options are. Work with you to develop something collaboratively.”

Again, it would have been good to have this kind of language in the preamble to let them know that it is very good—that we want children to know that if things derail, the Ombudsman is on their side. The Ombudsman will be there to try to provide investigation and try to help whatever complaints they have. But if we really want the Ombudsman to be helpful to as many children as possible, it’s time to talk about digital chat. It’s time to talk about making it friendly to youth and to make sure that the youth will have a say into what is about to be done.

I will quote from the Ombudsman again: “Provide that all children’s aid societies must inform a youth who is turned down for a” voluntary youth services agreement “about the existence and role of the ... Ombudsman” by adding section 77(8), “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 a language suitable to their understanding, of the existence and role of the Ombudsman of Ontario and of how the Ombudsman of Ontario may be contacted.” To make it mandatory every time a child is turned down by the voluntary youth services agreement to let them know that the Ombudsman is there would make a huge difference. It was voted down.

Another recommendations from the Ombudsman: “Provide that all children’s aid societies must inform a youth who requests, is offered, or enters an agreement under section 124,” the Ready, Set, Go agreements, “information about the Ombudsman by adding” into section 124(2) of the bill:

“Where a person requests, is offered, or enters into an agreement under subsection (1), or the society terminates the agreement, the person shall be informed by the society of the existence and role of the Ombudsman ... and how the Ombudsman of Ontario may be contacted.”

That is work that children’s aid does that often leads to conflict between the child and the children’s aid: The child is turned down for something that they want; a Ready, Set, Go agreement is put aside, or whatever. This is the time when the child should know that the Ombudsman is on their side and is there to help them.

It would have been really easy to put it into the bill. The Ombudsman had already said, “Here’s where you put it into the bill. Here’s the language that needs to be changed.” And the Conservative members on the committee voted it down.

There are a number of changes that were requested by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Again, I will read into the record what they’ve asked: “Ensure the exceptions to the publication ban adequately balance the privacy interests of all affected individuals and are clearly set out in legislation rather than regulation.”

When an independent officer of the Legislature takes time to write things down, to say he or she has read the bill, that there is a way to achieve what we want to achieve—this is what we want to do, we all agree on what we want to do—but the bill needs to be written in a certain way, we should take this good advice into account. But the Conservative members on the committee voted it down.

There is only one minute left. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about the Association of Native Child and Family Services Agencies of Ontario. They had a number of recommendations that they wanted to do to the bill in order to clarify how the fine collection was going to be done, clarify how the penalties were going to be done. They also wanted to “implement data collection tools that respect Indigenous data sovereignty, as Indigenous children and youth are overrepresented in care and most data will represent them. Use the Indigenous data governance principles of ownership, control, access and possession.”

We want reconciliation, Speaker. We all know that First Nations children are way overrepresented in the children’s aid societies. This has to change. How do you change this? Well, one way is to listen to the Association of Native Child and Family Services Agencies. They are on the front lines. They wrote things down for us to make amendments so that we would respect them, and the Conservative members voted them down.

I would say yes to pretty much all that she has asked for. We voted in favour of all six parts of the bill, so the bill works in all six parts. The end goals of all six parts are all things that we support. Provide for restrictions to the use and disclosure of certain personal information in certain circumstances—yes, absolutely. The part about investigations—yes, absolutely. The part about children in care, with respect to the Ombudsman—we respect the end goal.

We just wished that we could work together, listening to the experts who came and talked to us, many of them lawyers, many of them giving us—“This is the language that needs to be changed.” The changes were often small changes, just to make sure that we achieved the end goals that we all wanted to achieve. There was no collaboration when that process was going on.

I want to note that I’m really happy about the extension of the age—up to the age of 23—of support for children. I know people who aged out at 18, and it didn’t go well for them.

But my question is really about the child and youth advocate. There’s very much a difference between an Ombudsman and a child and youth advocate, because the child and youth advocate is proactive, whereas the Ombudsman is reactive. I wonder if you are supportive of bringing that role back.