CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES ACT (CONTINUED)
The House resumed at 8 p.m.
CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES ACT (CONTINUED)
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 77, An Act respecting the Protection and Well-being of Children and their Families.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Speaker, we left off the other day discussing the act and its principles. I would now like to move to a section which has been causing a bit of controversy of late. It has to do with the enunciation of powers by the minister with respect to agencies and societies in the province that receive funds from Ontario and provide services under grants from the ministry.
There has been some concern raised by agencies about the enunciation of revocation and takeover powers in the act. It is a little ironic that this is the case. Last year we saw a number of interventions by the Ministry of Community and Social Services without these powers being enunciated as they are now. One case was Beechgrove in which there was a need for involvement. There was a consideration of involvement, although it was never acted upon, nor needed to be acted upon, in the Sarnia Children's Aid Society situation. There was the takeover of the Family and Children's Services of the District of Kenora. All that was done outside of this act through the minister's authority as Minister of Community and Social Services and through an order in council.
The agencies are concerned because in the revocation powers enunciated by the minister they see pretty sweeping powers to revoke or suspend the approval of the association. In the case of a society, the minister has the power to revoke or suspend the designation, to remove any or all the members of the agency's board of directors and appoint others in their place, or operate and manage the agency in the place of the agency's board of directors.
Those powers would be expected within the notion of accountability; in fact, it should be the right of the ministry that provides funds and provides set standards. What people are rightly concerned about is for what reasons the minister might move.
Although a minister can move because a society is not providing its basic mandate -- I will go into that a little bit in a minute or two -- he can also move because a director or the agency has not fulfilled the nature of regulations governing the agency, regulations we do not yet see. We do not know their extent or the discretionary powers therein.
There is some talk about an appeal or hearing mechanism in the act, but it is unclear how it will be moved on. Before this session is over or before hearings on the act are finished and we go to clause-by-clause consideration, a lot of us hope to see some refinement of the wording to provide a more specific notion of the process and to provide more faith in our organizations. The reason I say that is the Kenora incident caused a great deal of concern, although there has been little information available to us on it. For the first time in many years, a children's aid society was moved on. As I recall, it was the first time for the reasons given.
It has since come to my attention that we have reason to suspect the real motives behind the takeover. In trying to make my point tonight about the concerns these agencies have about undue interference by the ministry and the possible misuse of discretionary powers, I would like to get into an analysis of what happened in Kenora and why the ministry moved, using documentation not available to the committee at the time of our meetings last January when I brought it up before.
To put it in context, I will start with the news release by the minister on January 18 this year. The minister said it was "regrettable but unavoidable" --
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Cousens): Does this pertain to Bill 77?
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I presume the Speaker was listening to me as I was speaking.
The Acting Speaker: I was trying to, but you are getting into an incident of the past and not of the future. Does it tie into Bill 77?
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I am speaking about section 23 of the bill on page 15 and the sections following that on the revocation powers of the ministry concerning agencies or children's aid societies to which it gives funding. I am concerned about the extent of the powers of the ministry and how they are being enunciated. I would like to make a connection between a specific takeover the ministry was involved in last year and this bill as it now reads to indicate some of the problems I see forthcoming.
The case I am dealing with is the incident of the takeover of the Family and Children's Services of the District of Kenora. On January 18 of this year the minister indicated it was "regrettable but unavoidable in light of the long-term and serious problems of the society." The news release said, "The review showed problems were serious enough to have led to a situation in which a number of children were at risk because of the agency's procedures." They were forced to act.
The matter of the children being at risk is very important and that is why I would like to focus on it. Under this new act, none of us would say to a minister he should not move when he sees children at risk. Section 16 says the rules of the society are to "protect children where necessary." If children were seen to be unprotected, the minister should have the right to move. In press statements during that period, the minister and the deputy minister continually talked about people being at risk.
8:10 p.m.
This is from a Globe and Mail article on February 18: "Deputy Minster Robert McDonald said while the review does not say certain children were at risk, the fact that the files were incomplete in 43 per cent of the cases and the senior management was not correcting problems meant children were in danger."
That was a reinterpretation of a statement that children were at risk and the giving to the Globe and Mail reporter of a report from 1982 about alleged cases of children being at risk at the agency. I will come back to that to show that was not the reason the ministry moved.
The first article on January 24 by Sylvia Stead in the Globe and Mail reads as follows: "A government press release said the action was needed because children were in danger of abuse because of the agency's procedures. Internal ministry documents obtained by the Globe and Mail show that a review of the Kenora society found four cases in which abused children were left in their homes at high risk and another seven cases in which children were in danger of abuse in their homes."
The connection was being made that the situation was continuing, the children were at specific risk and the ministry was forced to move.
Let us look at the situation in which the minister moved. In December 1983, he received a verbal report on an operational review that had been long overdue. In my view, as I will show through the process here, it was delayed by ministry inaction. We finally received the operational review in February 1984. It was summed up in verbal form for the ministry and alarmed the ministry to such a degree that it felt it had to act. It would not meet with the board of directors in the end. The situation was so dire, so serious indeed that it had no choice but to move.
Even that review team indicated there were children at risk. The executive summary of its report stated, "The ministerial review identified problems which resulted in children being at risk," and concluded it had to recommend that senior management be replaced. Another reason given was that there was such dissension within the board itself that the president and a number of others had actually resigned and the board was in pretty serious shape. I hope to bring forward some of the reasons that board was in fairly serious shape in terms of its relationship with the ministry.
An operational review was done in November 1983. It is a snapshot of what an agency is like over a month, done by four outside people. I would not say those people were particularly biased, but putting it in the context of another report I have, it was not a very competent undertaking.
Of the five people involved in this process, three were from the ministry. When we see the kind of relationship that existed between the ministry and its economic policies towards this board, we can see why that might jeopardize the kind of report that would be coming back. Besides that, there was a gentleman from the North Cochrane District Family Services and a consultant from DPA Group Inc. in Toronto.
This is what they based their review on. This is very important. This ministry decided it should close down the operations of a board, put in its own senior administration, replace that board and shove it aside. This is what it based its information on: "Files were selected randomly from a computerized list. In all, over 80 files were reviewed in detail while many more were reviewed briefly"
It is true they talked to a lot of staff. There are anecdotes throughout regarding the attitudes of staff. There are a number of recommendations, some of which seem quite serious and damning and some of which seem incredibly trite. They are just basic little things such as item 29: "A strategy for rendering a simple set of useful operational statistics from the computerized information system should be developed. This could grow into something sophisticated over time, but should start with some basic indicators."
There are many more serious kinds of matters as well as an awful lot of economic and financial considerations, but there is nothing of any substance that talks about children at risk.
I would like to compare that with a report done by consultants in October 1983 -- these consultants had been with this board, some for a few months and some for many months -- and what they said about the board. First, let me talk a little bit about what they based their report on besides this long period of time working along with the staff of the Kenora CAS. They said: "As well, the findings are based on an intensive review of over 300 files, a re-review of over 50 cases and a case audit conducted by the supervisors and staff of a further 700."
That report, produced by Frederick Funston and Associates and provided to the board on October 12, 1983 -- less than a month before the operational review went into practice and obviously ignored by the operational review team as it went in -- listed pages of accomplishments and improvements of that board over the past year.
They had developed in-service planning and delivery, standing goals and objectives, quarterly case audits, recording and court reporting formats, quarterly service plan progress reports, significant improvements in intake, investigation and emergency response, child abuse case management, adoption and crown ward care, court case management and administration, foster home studies, the Birchcliff program review -- Birchcliff is the receiving home in the area -- and a study of foster placement breakdown. That is just one little section of the things they say they accomplished.
I will come back to that because, when one has this written by people who have been involved so long with that agency, which surely the ministry knew about, and a verbal report by people who have been in there for less than a month, I think it is interesting to know why this ministry felt it had to move and why I felt it had to put up the notion that kids were at risk when since that time not one child has been brought forward as being at risk.
We were told by ministry people at the hearings that there were two. I looked into the matter and found that one was in care and the other was over 16 but was receiving care and treatment. No child was identified.
To put it in perspective, this is an agency that is dealing with one of the largest single problem areas in the province. It has a history of all sorts of difficulties, numbers of native kids in care and that kind of thing. I did not find any of this in that statement of remarkable progress by that board.
What is all this business about children being at risk, which we were supposed to be so concerned about, which was the reason a government should move on an individual agency and which we now want to put in even more definitively within this act?
In 1982, a brown paper envelope was sent to the ministry expressing concerns about abuse. The ministry rightfully moved on it, as it should have. There were allegations that 11 or 12 children were abused or at serious risk, as I noted in the initial quotation from the Globe and Mail.
I do not know why the Globe and Mail was not told about the assessment that was done in 1983. I do not know why the ministry somehow felt it was important to give them information that was two years old instead of an assessment that was done less than a year before.
I have a report here, dated May 6, which was provided to the staff of the agency by Mr. Garry Norris, who has since been relieved of his duties at the agency because of his failure to communicate with his staff, amongst other kinds of things, I have heard. There is a very nice covering note to the staff congratulating them on the work they are doing.
8:20 p.m.
This is a report filed by a ministry consultant, one of the ones who was involved in the writing of this report, in which he says the following about those cases:
"Eleven of the 12 cases identified as child abuse by the ministry's review team, which were served from the Kenora office, have been reviewed. In eight of the 11 cases the children involved were or are now in care of the society." This is the important part, and I do not know why the Globe was not told. "It should be noted that of the 11 identified cases, there is disagreement between the society and the ministry's team as to whether child abuse or serious neglect existed in six of the cases. From my review, I am in agreement with the society's judgement."
Why did the minister not give that to the Globe? Why did he not say that an outside, competent reviewer indicated the ministry's assessment of the neglect was wildly overestimated? Why did he not do that, and why did he not consider her recommendations further when he decided to close this place down? I have more information on this, but I have too much information to go through it all.
There are a number of things raised here. One of them is the whole question of the finances of the society. I believe that is the real reason they took this place over. The management there was saying: "We have an enormous problem and you are not recognizing it in funding. Even if you gave us a major increase the year before and you provided us with consultants, this is an enormous problem area." The ministry did not want to see that continue and did not like that difference of opinion.
What kind of support did they get from the ministry? I happen to have some minutes here from the children's aid society. On April 11, 1983, it was minuted that the 1981 budget was finally approved. All the way through the minutes we are talking about there are statements about trying to get on with program plans and budget plans for that year and about the lack of response from the ministry. This is a two-way street in terms of the economic relationship and responsibility between an agency and the ministry. The ministry must also provide its support and its share of assistance.
The members will see more of that when we come to look at the delays that were involved in the appointment of the team for the operational review. They were not given the support they should have had.
However, what follows is the strangest item in all the information I received counterposing the fears and the concerns of this ministry -- which talked about children at risk from 1982, let us remember that.
In May 1983 a concern was raised, because of interviewing done by a Globe and Mail writer, that there might be another story out about the Family and Children's Services of the District of Kenora. A joint press release was written which never had to be used because the story never appeared. It stated as follows: "The ministry has recently completed a follow-up inspection in order to evaluate the progress the agency had made in addressing the original recommendation." This is on the problems of child abuse in the year before. "The inspection determined that the agency had achieved the majority of the actions required to implement the recommendations. Policies and procedures have been developed and were found to be in place generally throughout the agency."
This is a very strong statement of support. It is interesting that when they decided to take it over, they went back to things that took place the year before which they say are still endemic. There is this agreement between the agency and the ministry.
Hon. Mr. Drea: Whose press release?
Mr. R. F. Johnston: It was a joint press release, as I understand it, from the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the society. The minister may deny it. I will leave that up to him later on.
At the June 6 meeting, the initial service plan draft on operations for that year was introduced. There would be a report to the June 11 board meeting. At that meeting, it is minuted, "Dan Rooney from the Ministry of Community and Social Services will attend the August 15 executive meeting to discuss the September operational review and for signatures on the contract." There is a contractual relationship between the ministry and the society. "All board members will be invited to attend." We have learned that they never got that review in operation until November.
There is an awful lot of talk about the lack of action in terms of the native community. Although we can say the society did not do all we wanted or would like to see it do in terms of providing more controls for native groups, in the minutes of that June 11 meeting we have a resolution presented to the board that it establish an ad hoc committee composed of representatives of the native community, a native advisory board. That was in June 1983.
As we will see later on, the board took a number of other actions to try to increase native involvement in the organization.
On August 15, there is an interesting minute: "Terry White, program consultant, and Rick Bourgeois, co-ordinator of operational reviews, CS, from the ministry were in attendance." It says here: "Contrary to our expectations did not have a firm statement concerning the review team; requested the agency to provide a name for the team leader position; did not have résumés of prospective team leaders and was unaware that the time frames were attached as appendix D, and this information had been in Toronto since June."
Also, there was a lot of talk that one of the society's major problems was that it did not do much media work and community relations with its local community. There is another minute I noticed here about it starting to issue news releases to the media after meetings.
As late as October 11, there was a letter to Terry White and K. Barber concerning negotiations for a service plan and the October 18 meeting they were going to have; that has still not taken place. There was a letter received regarding a change in the team assistant to the operational review team. The agreement has been signed and returned to the ministry but no starting date has been established. That was in October 1983. That is the co-operation and support this group received from the ministry.
This report, which called on the agency to be taken over, points to an awful lot of difficulties. This report that I talked about with the consultants in October also spoke about difficulties, but it talked as well about an awful lot of accomplishments.
One would think, reading the operational review report, that nothing had been done at all in terms of systematizing the information in the agency. I thought that was strange, because when I was in Kenora in September the agency showed me a lot of new computerized information it had which, as I recall, had a very tight rein on the abuse cases in particular.
On page 5 of the Frederick Funston and Associates report in October, we find out that the case management information system has been computerized and is being brought up to date. The manual for both personnel and finance is being developed as a framework for the continuing development of these policies and procedures.
An example of the service audit done by computer is included in the report. There is a lot of talk about uncompleted files and the problems of intake workers in the Kenora office in the operational review. Yet this report by these people who were there for months says on page 7, "As of the end of June there were no cases open at intake in the Kenora office longer than 21 days." That is not a bad record.
There has been action in adoption in crown ward care. Training programs were proposed for implementation concerning all workers throughout the district. It makes it sound here as though the agency had never even thought of doing that, that it had never been proposed to it, that it had never accepted the idea, and yet here it is in this other report from a month earlier.
What kind of a snow job was this? Why were they sent there? Why did they come through with such a damning, nonwritten report which then allowed the ministry to proceed?
8:30 p.m.
The receiving home at Birchcliff, which I talked about before, had some very serious safety problems, especially in terms of fire. That was recognized by all involved. There was a call to action on that, but it was minuted back in May and June that they knew of the problem and were trying to get assistance from various people to improve the physical standards of the building.
The improvements that have taken place in the operation of Birchcliff are totally ignored in this operational review. The consultants' report stated proposals were moving along very well and that the staff had developed detailed work plans for the improvement of recreational programs. A review of files conducted by the consultants indicated the Birchcliff files were probably the best child care files in the agency.
That does not come through anywhere in the operational review report. It makes it sound as if the board has never done anything on foster care, that it has not looked at it at all. I can point back to the minutes from June and the early summer of 1983; meetings that board members had with foster parents on the development of an association. The consultants' report reflects that and talks about a foster care staff task force being established and the attempts to establish a foster care association.
"The society has stepped up its foster parent recruitment," it says. "There are campaigns through radio appeals and newspaper advertisements. There has been a film on permanency planning and the importance of proper, lasting care for the children" -- which they rave about in the review.
The report indicates the members of the board recognize the need to serve the northern isolated native groups more effectively. It is here in the consultants' report. In the operational review, it is as if they have not even looked at it. One really has to question what was behind it.
The operational review claims board members did not do any work on community and public relations, yet the consultants have a whole page of information on this analysis which indicates they have been doing an awful lot and were going to do more. All was not sweetness and light, and they admit that was the case; but when one looks at the operational review's attack it makes one think that perhaps senior management never even spoke to the staff, that they had no involvement at all in any of the decisions taking place in the agency.
That runs totally counter to the consultants' conclusions that staff has a clear voice in these continuing developments. I will read the conclusions of the consultants:
"The society now has defined standards of service, a method to measure the quality of service, a framework to determine the need for additional staff, a plan for improving service, a plan for measuring progress towards those goals. Staff have a clear voice in these continuing developments. They have the opportunity and they also have the responsibility to provide input. Staff now have input through task groups, the in-house newsletter and the communications group: the clerical staff are now involved." These are all indications of improvement.
If that is not enough, there are another three pages which I will not bother to go through. There are seven pages of all the work the consultants did with the group with respect to the kinds of presentations made to the board and to committees. Then there is a proposed review, a schedule of things the agency must do to bring itself up to the proper levels of service we expect in Ontario.
The question remains unanswered: Why did they move? Why did they accept a verbal report and not this written report? The information that was minuted should have been accessible to the ministry, as it now has been made accessible to me.
I will state the reason. It was a conflict between a number of people on the board and, specifically, with senior management and ministry officials. There was a desire by the ministry to try to clamp down on the financial operations of that board. If we look at what it has done since it has been in there, it has been a major emphasis on financial control.
It grabs the petty cash recommendations out of here and enforces them magnificently, but I suggest very little that was not already in planning and being worked on by local people has been done with respect to the care of children. Very little has changed. To take over an agency, to move in without a hearing, without a right to appeal, as the ministry did, makes one wonder what we are in for with the new act. It was unstated before. It was in the capacity of the Minister of Community and Social Services to do what he did, to get an order in council.
Now that we have this in the act, we want some controls and we want some evidence put before us as well as an appeal process that is guaranteed before ministries start moving in and messing around with local autonomy; otherwise, take them over and make them government-run now. If the government does not do that, it has to come clean with the people we are asking to go out and provide the services, who are doing so at rates that are probably cheaper than we would provide them in direct service by government. They are doing it in this fashion, cheaper, quite often because they are under financial constraints from this government.
Until we get these kinds of changes in the act, I am afraid all the government is doing is providing a licence for more Kenora operations, for the kind of sleazy takeover we saw this February. We saw a takeover because there was a conflict between management and ministry personnel, because they were not setting a good example, as far as the minister was concerned, in financial accountability, whatever that means. That is what it was about, and yet it was sold as a matter of children being at risk.
People like me had to say, "Well, if kids are at risk, go ahead and do it." We then got sold a bill of goods in committee. I said, "It looks as if they have justified their case." But as I now go over the real records of the time and see what the agency was trying to do and what the consultants who were working with them were doing, I have to believe I was taken.
I was taken just as much as were people of Kenora and that district, who now should wonder what kind of new agreement they should develop with the ministry. No matter who the new board members are and how well they seem to be doing at the moment with the government, they should wonder at what time at the whim of the minister with an unwritten report, with no substantiated cases of major abuse, will he not only move in for some strict accounting controls at a three-month or six-month period, but also wipe out all senior management, destroy the board totally and take over that agency.
It is time for the minister to say he will set up a very open process of mutual accountability in this process, one that is guaranteed and not done just at the whim of the minister hiding behind the statement that, "We cannot give you the facts on child protection cases because we cannot identify any kids." This is a wonderful thing to hide behind, but in this case there were no kids needing protection whom the minister had to hide from us.
The next item I would like to deal with is the question of the residents of the long-term facility. This is in sections 35 through 37. I said at the beginning of my remarks that we have good due process procedures now for protecting the rights of kids who are being taken in by children's aid societies to make sure they are not being improperly snatched, which is the term often used.
We have procedures now to guarantee that children who run afoul of the law are protected and have rights to legal counsel and all sorts of due process before they are incarcerated. Yet when we have children who are mentally ill and disturbed, or who are thought to be mentally ill and disturbed, we cannot provide them with due process.
We have instead a system of a residential placement advisory committee, which reviews the case of that child only once he is in the institution. We have waiting lists for children's mental health centres now that range from a year to two years. It is very difficult to get your child in unless it is an emergency.
8:40 p.m.
Yet if we brought in any kind of framework whereby before that child is placed there is some kind of review of it, where it is not just a decision made by the agency which perhaps wants to fill a bed or of parents who are desperate because they cannot handle their kid anymore, it may be shown to be a totally inappropriate place for that child.
Instead, we have a system where it states that within 90 days of the day on which the child is placed in the institution there shall be a meeting of this review committee to see if that child should be there. What do you think about that, Mr. Speaker?
We are talking about kids between the ages of 12 and 16. A 12- or 13-year-old child, confused, disturbed to some degree or other, can he incarcerated for 90 days in a mental institution. That is what they are. They are friendlier places than the large institutions we have in society for the adult mentally ill, but they are mental institutions. Three months will go by during which that child will be in there; three months before this review board must look at whether or not that was an appropriate placement. That is incredible.
The only exception to that is something which has been added to the act this time which is useful. That is, if there is a child who has the wits at the time of placement to object, then within 14 days of the child being placed there must be a review. There is no guarantee the child's wishes will be taken into account; but that is another matter, we can deal with that later.
Why do we not have a process established for all these children, except those emergency cases, so they will be screened before they are placed?
There is a plan right now, operating in Hamilton on a voluntary basis, where there is that pre-placement review. In that process, two-thirds of the children are not placed in residential facilities. Only one-third is streamed into the children's mental health centre.
Why do we not put into law that, except in emergency situations, that will be the ease? Why send those kids into the institution, compound their problems and reinforce the agency's desire to have them stay? Why put all that power into even the best, most well-meaning agency?
They will have the ear of the review committee, if they say, "We really believe this child should be there. We can document over the last three-and-a-half weeks some strange things this child has done," or whatever they are going to say. Why do we not do it in advance? Why has the minister not acted in terms of that basic sense of due process? I find it mind-boggling that is the ease.
Presuming that a child is dissatisfied with the review committee's decision that he or she should be there, since this is only an advisory committee, he can request a hearing by a board that is now being established. The board shall, within 10 days of receiving the child's application, state whether or not it intends to hold a hearing. The hearing is not a definite thing that will take place just because a child or parent may request it; it is not absolutely necessary.
If they decide it shall take place. within 30 days of receiving the child's application it must make a determination. If that child has not been up to complaining about his placement in the first place, before he was admitted, but it comes up at his first hearing that he is not satisfied or is not satisfied with the results of that first hearing, a child could he there for 120 days before getting an answer.
If this board turns out to be anything like the Social Assistance Review Board, having a limitation in the act stating that it must report within 30 days will mean nothing. It sure does not mean anything to the Social Assistance Review Board. It sometimes takes 50, 60 or 100 days to rule on the cases of some of our most hard-pressed citizens.
We have to speed up the process. We have to front-end it and speed up the question of how quickly we are going to do assessments of the children already in there. There is no guarantee of legal representation at this board. All the way through the act, and in other places, there is a concept of due process, of a right to a hearing.
I know it worries some of the clinicians, but in this day and age it is important to have a balance of some sort with the rights of children being taken into account. I am hopeful we will have a change in that portion of the act before it is finally passed. I think it is inconsistent with the philosophy of due process as it is couched in the rest of the act. We should surely be coherent.
I have a concern about some letters we have been receiving of late. I do not know if you have had any, Mr. Speaker. I know my colleague the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) has received some. They are from people who are concerned about the definition of a child in need of protection in this act and about the powers of the children's aid societies. Through their correspondence and calls they suggest the powers of the state to come in and snatch children are somehow being enhanced. I want to state very strongly this is not what the act is about. I want to put it on the record that I do not believe that is what this act is all about.
Members of the committee who dealt with this know, as do all the people from the ministry who tried to draft this act, it is virtually impossible to strike the perfect balance between the right of the state or society to intervene in the best interests of the child and the need to support families and their right to nurture and raise their own children. Finding that balance requires the wisdom of Solomon.
We made a couple of changes to try to bring about more of that balance by requiring that substantial risk of harm must be shown before a child can be seen to be in need of protection. I am very concerned that people think children's aid societies are in the business of snatching children indiscriminately. Very few children actually go into care or wardship out of the number of children dealt with. Those who do are usually either in extreme emergency situations or there is continued incapacity to provide the necessary supports to allow the family to maintain itself, however one defines that.
The idea that it is possible for the children's aid society to move in an emergency situation and not go to court for as much as five days to justify it must be put in the context of the cases we are dealing with. The children who die in child abuse cases are mostly under the age of three, the vast majority are infants. If a children's aid society worker were to find on a Friday night a child of 12 months being neglected to the extent that he or she feared major dehydration of that child and feared the child's life was in danger, that worker must have the capacity to move in and to take the child to a place of safety, to get the medical assistance needed, and to justify that action before a judge at the earliest opportunity and not later than five days afterwards.
That capacity has to be left in the act. It is present practice and it is not being misused. Judges will certainly let agencies know if they are moving too indiscriminately in that area. Under the Young Offenders Act there is now no provision for a child under the age of 12 to be arrested for a crime. They no longer qualify, which I think is a very progressive move.
8:50 p.m.
A child under 12 who is in trouble with the law for one reason or another may be taken by police officers to a police station while they find the parents or other people who will provide support. I think this is inevitable, although I have some concerns about the effect on very young children who may be in trouble and may be disturbed children.
I would just say it is not in the act, and I do not know if it can actually be written into the act, but surely we have to ensure that police stations, because they will essentially be repositories on occasion for these kids, have appropriate facilities for those children, that young children of that age are not kept in a place that would be threatening to them.
I think it is important that we move in this area. I do not know whether this should be done by regulation or just by a policy statement out to the Attorney General's office or the Solicitor General's office about providing that kind of facility. The more I hear about the circumstances or the possible circumstances of children being kept in a police station for some time, the more I hope we can make sure it is in the best kind of facility possible.
As I said earlier, I have some real concerns about the limitations in this case on the powers of a judge who does not wish to find a child in need of protection, but who believes the child may become in need of protection if certain actions are not taken. When a case is brought before a judge, a judge does have to look at such things as what actions did the children's aid society take in the quiet past: did it get a homemaker in, did it provide day care, did it provide all sorts of other kinds of supports. That is a good thing, and I am glad it is written into the act.
But after he makes a judgement on that child and finds the child not to be in need of protection by the definition, yet he has concerns about the risk to the child -- perhaps he does not feel it is substantial risk at this point, but there is a risk -- he has no capacity under this act to order that day care be provided, or that a single father who has a child at home and who is not caring for it properly receive the training to enable him to cook properly for his child; there is no capacity to order appropriate service, and I think this is a deficiency in this act that should not go uncorrected.
I have some concerns -- and I will just refer to this, if I might, on page 75 of the bill -- about the whole question of the child's religious faith. We have improved the wording of this act so that we do not necessarily have a child take what was in the conceptual draft act, the religion of the father; rather, where it cannot be determined, what seems to be the religion of the family in general, or the mother, or whoever, may be taken.
Subsection 83(3) seems to me to be talking about a society that does not exist any longer in Ontario. It is not a society now that is divided only between Catholics and Protestants; it is a society now of many religions, many cultural groups. When I see the wording of the section:
"A Protestant child shall not be committed under this part to the care of a Roman Catholic society or institution and a Roman Catholic child shall not be committed under this part to a Protestant society or institution," and back and forth, "and, where a child committed under this part is other than Protestant or Roman Catholic, the child shall be placed where practicable with a family of his or her own religious faith, if any."
I ask myself, is it not time we wrote in something about other religions that gives them the same kind of strength of protection. It may be that a small Tibetan community in Lindsay cannot expect this kind of protection, but it seems to me that if we think this principle is an important one, then we should be expanding the principle to relate it to other groups.
There are a number of contradictions in the act that I find strange. One that is most disturbing is the juxtaposition of extraordinary measures like electroshock prods, cattle prods, and the possibility of using them in aversive therapy within the act -- that it exists under control -- with the statement on page 87 that, "No service provider shall inflict corporal punishment on a child or permit corporal punishment to be inflicted on a child in the course of the provision of a service to the child." There is no definition of what corporal punishment is.
That prod could well be corporal punishment. Even a very severe holding down of a child -- the mechanism of holding a child is probably the safest in dealing with kids who are acting out -- can be abused, can be violent and can be corporal punishment if it is done for three hours or if it is done after the child has been incited to act out so he can then be taught not to do it that way. That can be the case. That is not good therapy. In a sense that is corporal punishment. The juxtaposition of some of the extraordinary measures allowed in this act and the statement that there shall be no corporal punishment is passing strange.
I do not want to take up too much time since I am sure other members want to get involved with this very important act. I would like to spend a little time on the question of adoption. It is an incredibly emotional issue for all of us, but especially for people who have been involved in adoptive relationships, whether they are parents who have given up children, children who have been adopted or adoptive parents.
Surely we have come to a time in our society where we can have more openness and more consistent recognition of the right of adults to know. Surely the days have gone when information can be kept from an adopted child who has reached the age of majority, even if the birth parent wishes to meet that child or have him know about the birth parent, just because the adoptive parent does not feel he is up to it.
Some progressive changes have been made in this section, but we have not developed the idea that this is a two-party relationship at the time of majority. It is a decision between the birth parent and the child as to whether they will make contact. To ignore that in this day and age is wrong.
I have little doubt it will take us a long time to get back to this act. The idea and the basic consensus of our committee about having a provision that would affect children 18 years from now may have been the consensus of the committee, but I do not think it is in any way adequate. It is time to state the superior rights. In my view, they are the rights of the child.
I received a letter three days ago from a friend and constituent who heard the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere (Mr. Robinson), the member for Hamilton Centre (Ms. Copps) and me on Metro Morning. In my years here I have received many moving letters about unemployment and the economic hardships of people, but I have never received a letter that had the impact on me of this one. I would like to read it because it is vital that we hear the feelings of this person.
"Dear Richard:
"I have been meaning to speak to you ever since I heard you were on the committee looking at child legislation. I heard you on the radio this morning about adoption records, and I decided to write this time because you might have some interest in what I have to say.
"I am a step adoption. My parents were married in Scotland in 1936 and were divorced in England in 1947. I was born in 1942. A Canadian soldier married my mom after her divorce and the three of us emigrated and came to Toronto. After the two-year compulsory wait before an adoption, I was adopted by my mother and stepfather. My name was legally changed but my birth certificate, which was British, could not be amended.
9 p.m.
"My parents never told me that I was adopted or that my mother, who had never converted, was Jewish herself, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from the Pale settlement in Lithuania. My mother died in 1976. In late 1980, I discovered quite by chance news of my Jewish origin. By this time I was nearing completion of a degree in theology in the United Church heading for ordination.
"My stepfather, realizing that I would soon know everything, decided to show me my birth certificate, which I had never seen. In a three-week period in October 1980, I had two religions and two fathers. My world had shattered.
"With the help of my mom's family, we located my father in London, England, who, thank God, was still alive and well. He is now 75 years old. When we finally met at Paddington station, I knew I had come home.
"After three and a half years, I am still in intensive turmoil. Who am I? It is not a matter of philosophical speculation or a matter of lobbying. Those of us who are adopted, especially in the way I was, have been cut off from ourselves. We are dust blowing in the wind.
"Only those who have experienced this can know the impact of such revelations. I am not a WASP with Presbyterian grandparents. I am Jewish with a 5,000-year history and I am in the middle of a gentile-Christian marriage. If the truth had been known, how much different our lives would have been.
"Our children are all adopted. As I wrestled with my own infertility 16 years ago, I knew that children who would he put in our care would he ours in the sense that we would have to learn from them and grow with them, be responsible for them, shape their values, do our best with them, gifts and liabilities that we both have as persons who have never parented before.
"Well, I always knew, and my husband had too, that somewhere on their birthdays another mother was thinking about them and dealing with her own grief in her own way and hoping her child was okay. I do not know whether they will search or not. The youngest is seven and doesn't know his story, but the others know theirs. It they want to search, whether it hurts me or not, I will help them until they are satisfied.
"Please, Richard, fight to make the legislation open. We have the human right to know who we are. We are not the property of anyone else. Settle for nothing less than full disclosure and think seriously about what the British law about not changing birth certificates does. I would never have known the truth. Believe me, the truth has not made life easy, but it is the truth and it is better than the lie we all lived for so long.
"I understand that I cannot see my adoption file. A CAS worker dug it up for me when I found out and she told me certain things. That's my life, Richard, and I want to see what is on that paper. The worker has since left the CAS and says the records have since been sealed, but I want them. Since I know all the parties involved, since my stepfather has since died, can you help me? I am particularly looking for the spelling of a doctor's name.
"I didn't intend to write this much. I hope you can hear my pain. It is the same with others. It is hard enough to deal with trauma like this without the government standing in our way and saying the big no.
"When I went to Registry House in Edinburgh, I looked up my grandparents' death certificates and found the names and occupations of my great-grandparents. I cannot tell you the sense of rootedness that it gave me to know that my grandfather's name was Israel, that my great-grandfather's name was Israel. It told me where I came from and to whom I belonged, and it cost me five pounds to do the search, and I had a right in law to that information.
"Please, Richard, make it possible for us in Ontario to know who we are, and if you can help me in particular. please let me know."
She consented to let me read that tonight because, although it is so baring, she feels compelled to speak out and to hope that this assembly will respond.
This is not an easy issue. It is difficult for adoptive parents to let go. She knows that as an adoptive parent herself. There are a lot of adopted children who will not need to know, for whom it will not be important. We know from the British experience that there are not many people who go to the registry. But for those people. like this constituent of mine, who need to know so much, how can we keep that information from them? It seems to me to be quite unthinkable.
In the hearings we have, whenever the committee meets and when this House comes back, I hope we will have a full debate of this issue, that we will discuss it in full and that we will find ourselves capable of moving more progressively than has yet been seen in this legislation.
There are a couple of other things I want to go over briefly and then I will yield the floor.
First, I want to talk about disclosure of records and confidentiality of records. When we look at that section, it looks quite positive. A record is defined fairly loosely, and it looks as if all of us, but children in particular, have the right to have access to information about us; but then we start to go through the limitations on what kind of records are available to us.
I suggest there is one limitation we need to look at seriously; it is under clause 163(2)(f), the definition of a clinical record, which we have borrowed from subsection 29(1) of the Mental Health Act. A clinical record under that act is defined as one that is a record of a patient which is determined to be of a clinical nature by a worker in that establishment.
It is quite possible for a file to be labelled clinical by a mental health worker in a children's mental health centre and to include information that is not of a basic medical nature but which cannot be provided because that would disrupt the integrity of the patient-doctor relationship.
As a result, for children in a children's mental health centre, as they go through the process of wanting a review of how they have been treated, everything about them could be in that file and therefore not made available to the review body that is established under this act. Surely that would defeat the whole purpose of trying to give people access to information and to provide them with a capacity to make an argument for improper placement or that they are being inadequately dealt with in an institution.
I ask the minister to please look at that section to see whether the wording can be changed so as to come up with our own definition of a clinical record that would not put us in that kind of situation.
The last thing I want to mention deals with what I have already termed the most positive aspect of this act, and that is the section dealing with native rights, part IX, sections 191 through 197, and the other items involved around Indian and native rights.
I recently reread the documents submitted to the ministry by the Chiefs of Ontario on April 18, looking at the wording they had used and the approach they had taken in that act. I want to raise a couple of concerns in which I see a veering away from the thrust of one or two of the things they said. They may not seem important, and the minister may not even hear from the chiefs themselves on this; it may not be something which they would draw to his attention.
9:10 p.m.
Leaving that specific section and going hack to the definition of the best interests of a child, the wording of subsection 38(3) concerns me a little because it gets away from the notion of the separateness of the Indians as a group. It says:
"Where a person is directed in this part to make an order or determination in the best interests of a child, the person shall take into consideration those of the following circumstances of the case that he or she considers relevant." Then there is list of things that he may or may not take into account.
What concerns me about this is that one of the things that would then be discretionary to be taken into account would be paragraph 38(3)5, which is: "Where the child is an Indian or a native person, the importance, in recognition of the uniqueness of Indian and native culture, heritage and traditions, of preserving a child's cultural identity."
If that is going to be in a list of things that may be taken into account, the person determining the best interests of the child could take nine of the 10 and not choose that one. I would suggest that what the Indian chiefs were saying was that their lndianness is of such vital importance that it should be separated out from this section and made a clear section on its own; that, besides those other items, when a native child is involved, cultural identity must be considered. Surely that would be more in keeping with the nature of the way we have established the section on native autonomy and on their capacity to have their own child welfare agencies.
I find it even more disconcerting that the same wording is used in subsection 130(2) under "Adoption." I think this is something we surely do not want to see. We are determining the best interests of a child in the case of adoption and we have seen what our past practices of having encouraged white adoption of native children has done to native communities and to many of those native children.
To list this as one of the things that may be looked at, to say that "the person shall take into consideration those of the following circumstances...that he or she considers relevant," to say that he or she has a choice about that with native kids is to miss the point of what those native leaders were saying. I certainly hope we will see this removed and made separate, as we saw it removed and made separate in the principles of the act or as we see there is a need for a separate section in the act itself for the establishment of Indian child and family services.
One final thing I would raise -- because I am not a lawyer, but I do remember conversations I had with Mr. Powless and others from the Indian chiefs -- is the fact that the notion of the definition of "band" was very important to them. They did not want to see the notion of "band" limited strictly to that which is provided in the Indian Act; they wanted a definition that would encompass the notion that the band decides who its membership is.
Therefore, if in northern Ontario there is a band situated on a specific reserve, but lying outside the reserve there were several outposts of Indians who worked with the band and were considered by the band to be part of that community, part of the family, it would have the right to make the decision that it could provide care to those children and those families as well.
Looking at the definition as it has been brought to us at this time, I am not sure it provides that capacity. It provides for a capacity of the band as we know it under the Indian Act and of the native community as two separate and distinct things, but I do not see it allowing that kind of flexibility for bands in northern Ontario. I would love to have some clarification and perhaps some legal advice on that from the ministry when we get to the committee stage.
There are other things I am sure I could dwell on and deal with, but I am very cognizant of the fact that many others in this House would like to speak on this bill.
I would just sum up by saying the following. In my view, and perhaps it is because I am the critic for the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the bill before us is one of the most important we have had for a long time. It is one in which I believe all members of the House should involve themselves in terms of discussion and debate and by thinking about it. It is a statement of where we are going in children's policies in Ontario.
I think there are some wonderful things in it. In many ways it is still at the leading edge of legislation for social services for children, but I have some grave concerns about its limitations. Although there has been a lot of consultation, a lot of people having a swing at the ball in terms of getting their points of view across, I hope there will be an openness from the minister and the ministry about other suggestions coming forward.
I hope by the time we finish with this act it will be one that members on all sides of the House can be proud of and stand to support, instead of showing the reluctant opposition I have had to state in my position tonight.
Mr. Riddell: Mr. Speaker, judging from the length of the comments just completed by the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston), you may get the impression there is much to be desired in Bill 77.
I believe there are some excellent features included in this bill. I certainly want to congratulate the minister for addressing the concerns expressed by many of the people who appeared before the committee. Having said that, however, I want to tell the minister that Bill 77 in its present form is of serious concern to children's aid societies in my riding, to children's mental health centres and to some members of the medical profession.
This legislation purports to simplify the structure of service to children and provides safeguards for the rights of parents and children. In so doing, I believe it also establishes costly and unnecessary bureaucratic mechanisms that will hinder the effectiveness of the services provided.
While there has been an extensive consultation on this legislation, there are still serious issues now that the bill is before the Legislature. It appears the authors perceive that family autonomy will be enhanced and rights best protected by a maze of bureaucratic and legal procedures, committees and boards. I will get back to that at the conclusion of my remarks.
I want to outline some of the major concerns that some of the family and children's services have in my riding. I am sure the same concerns are shared by family and children's services throughout the province.
From the viewpoint of a citizen seeking service or a community planning to meet its needs, there is no longer legislative provision for any children's service other than a children's aid society or a publicly known funding provision for such service. The services will be those the minister approves under such funding as the minister decides.
Children's aid societies are at present organizations with clear-cut responsibilities, funding relationships and a duty to administer the act within their territory. While the new legislation provides for the continuation of existing societies, it also permits the minister to designate any approved agency as a children's aid society. It imposes, varies and removes terms, conditions or functions of the society.
It gives extensive new powers to the minister to revoke or suspend the designation of a society upon notice and subject to a hearing, to remove directors and to suspend provisionally without a hearing. It gives unhindered access to any record of the agency by any person whom the minister designates as a program supervisor, with penalties for obstructing or refusing to co-operate with such a person. It becomes an offence to fail to furnish a report, whenever the minister requests it, in the form and containing the information specified by the minister.
9:20 p.m.
What happens to the accountability of the board of directors? Although a declared principle is the autonomy and integrity of the family unit, a service provider may provide counselling to a child 12 years of age or over without the consent or knowledge of his parents, although the parent has legal and financial responsibility. A parent does not have access to his child's counselling records. A child has access to his or her records, apparently, including family records, except a parent may designate specific information that is not to be disclosed to the child.
Residential placement advisory committees are permissive, which is preferable to mandatory committees. Where the minister appoints such a committee, it shall review every placement in an institution having 10 or more children within 90 days after placement, if the placement is intended to last 90 days, or at least once every 12 months. Where the child over 12 years objects to placement, the committee shall review within the third week and then every 12 months.
This would apparently apply to placements at the Children's Psychiatric Research Institute, Madame Vanier Children's Services and London Psychiatric Hospital, creating a time-consuming and expensive process superimposed on their existing multidisciplinary reviews and quality assurance procedures. Service providers such as children's aid societies would be required to prepare reports and assist and co-operate.
When a child over 12 objects to a placement and is dissatisfied with the review by the residential placement advisory committee, there is a provision for an appeal to a children's service review board. The definition of a "child in need of protection" is nebulous and lacking in criteria; for example, there is substantial risk that the child has suffered physical harm, that the child has been sexually molested or that the child has suffered emotional harm.
Confusion between the judicial role and the clinical role is evident. The society is required to submit in writing a description of the services to be provided to remedy the condition or situation, the criteria by which the society will determine when wardship is no longer required and an estimate of the time required to achieve the purpose. The court is then required to give a statement of every plan proposed to the court and the plan for the child's care that the court is applying in its decision. Thus, the judge not only makes the legal finding about the child's need for protection but also becomes the senior case manager in the case.
The legislation is review-happy. Apart from the normal case-management internal reviews, various management review processes required for good management, the overview of the board of directors, the court case reviews and status review, and the work of the ministry's program supervision, the legislation provides for placement review boards, appeals to a children's services review board, review teams appointed by the minister for child abuse cases, crown ward review, interdisciplinary review teams for intrusive procedures, a professional advisory board with powers of investigation and review, a review for access to records and licensing appeals to the children's services review board.
In this frantic effort to ensure rights and provide checks and balances, there will be little time left for care and treatment and little real authority left with the service providers who are responsible for getting the job done.
Let me put a question to the minister. Do the various measures designed to protect rights contribute to family autonomy and effective treatment? Before the minister responds in the affirmative, let me give him a couple of examples.
The parents of a 12-year-old girl find she is withdrawn and apparently depressed. She is progressing poorly in school and does not relate to her peer group. Concerned for her health and emotional development, they talk with her and with their physician. Meanwhile, the young girl decides to seek counselling on her own from a volunteer agency. Although the counsellor encourages her to involve her parents, she refuses to do so. She refuses to talk to them about her counselling sessions and has a right to continue without their consent.
Seeing no improvement, the parents arrange with their physician for an assessment by a children's mental health centre. Following a complete assessment by a multidisciplinary team, it is considered that the girl would benefit from a period of residential care. The parents consent to their daughter's admission and she is placed despite her objections.
Within three weeks, the residential placement advisory committee members, none of whom needs to be a mental health professional, must review the case. Upon review, they recommend continuation of placement and advise the child of her right to appeal to the Children's Services Review Board. That board conducts a hearing and decides the child should be discharged to her parents.
Rights have been protected in an expensive and extensive process, and the family is left with the original problem.
Let me give a second example. A 14-year-old boy is brought before the family court after the parents feel they have exhausted all means of fulfilling their responsibility to him. He is using drugs and alcohol, is truant from school and has been involved in a number of assaults against his peers. He is defiant at home and makes his own rules.
In court, the child, the parents and the society are all represented by counsel. The society is expected to submit a written plan describing the services to be provided to remedy the condition and an estimate of the time required to achieve the purpose.
The judge and the child's counsel are highly critical when the society submits its plan for care but indicate it is impossible to estimate whether change can be achieved and how long it will take. The criticism is duly reported by the media. The child is found to be in need of protection, but comes to the society's care with feelings of mistrust, first towards his family and now towards the agency.
In the ensuing six months, despite the best efforts of the social work staff and the foster parents, there is little change in behaviour and a residential placement is thought advisable. The child is entitled to and receives the status review by the courts, with counsel for all parties, because a major element in the plan for care is being changed. The court supports the residential placement as being in the best interests of the child.
Following residential placement, the whole process of placement advisory committee and Children's Services Review Board, as in the first example, comes into operation, in addition to a continuing family court process. This child needs a firm, consistent plan of care by a competent service provider if he is to be helped. He cannot be helped in an adversarial environment, punctuated by continuous reviews.
These are some of the concerns I wanted to bring to the attention of the minister. They are not only my concerns but also the concerns of the children's aid societies, the children's mental health centres and, as I indicated previously, some members of the health profession. I hope the minister has listened to some of the concerns I have expressed. When he responds, I hope he will address those concerns.
9:30 p.m.
Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate briefly in this debate. I know we are towards the end of the session. I think there is some interest in trying to see whether we cannot get this bill passed on second reading here this evening. Therefore, I intend to be brief. I will be participating this summer and probably again in the fall in the committee stage on the clause-by-clause.
I have been interested professionally in the Child Welfare Act since the early 1960s when the act was first put into modern form. I believe it was 1964 or 1965. I was on the standing committee on social development when we rewrote the Child Welfare Act and many other children's statutes in the period between 1977 and 1979. Here we are again in 1984 with, at last, the long-awaited omnibus children's bill.
Many of the issues discussed in 1964 are still relevant in 1984 and they are still not being addressed by the government. I refer to page 13 of the bill which sets out the purposes of a children's aid society. In clause 16(3)(c), one of the functions of a children's aid society is to "provide guidance, counselling and other services to families for protecting children or for the prevention of circumstances requiring the protection of children."
Here we are in 1984, and the notion that "prevention of circumstances requiring the protection of children" is still only worthy to be relegated to a subordinate clause in a subsection on the functions of children's aid societies is really puzzling, to say the least. I can remember the same discussion taking place in 1964 with respect to why on earth the government did not have the wit to define "prevention" and "preventive services" as one of the basic aims of the enterprise.
It is clear, 20 years later, that this government has no intention of making prevention a primary focus of our child welfare system. This is a government that says in its statute here before us tonight: first the breakdown of the family, first the crisis, first the child in need of protection; then come the services, the help, the extended hand of society, providing whatever resources are necessary to try to patch up the broken egg.
We do not seem to learn anything. There is no notion in this bill that society has an obligation to provide adequate resources in support of families and children before the breakdown occurs. There is no notion in this legislation that families and children have rights in law to full access to the wealth, resources and services of the society to prevent family breakdown and child pathology. There is no notion of that set out in this bill.
When we get to the clause-by-clause stage, I will be moving as an amendment to the Child and Family Services Act what I have set out in Bill Pr86, An Act to declare the Rights of Children in Ontario. I will do it and hope that we can have a good discussion about what is the key to the prevention of circumstances requiring the protection of children.
We have heard increasingly from children's aid societies that what we are dealing with is essentially a phenomenon of child poverty; we are dealing with the results of poverty. What we are dealing with in our child welfare legislation is an attempt to respond to the consequences of child poverty.
It seems to me, since that is what we are dealing with, that the people who are served by child welfare agencies are, by and large, the children of the poor and their families. It makes sense to try to come to grips with that phenomenon right off the bat. That means we have to talk about the statutory right of people in this society to their fair share of the society's wealth, resources and services. In a nutshell, that is what I have tried to set out.
At least in a preliminary way in the act to declare the rights of children in Ontario it tries to set out rights, not in terms of our traditional notions of freedoms and liberties but to broaden the notion of rights to include and encompass the notion of entitlement to services, resources and to a fair share in the wealth of the society.
That debate at least has to take place before we pass the omnibus children's act. It is simply inadequate to pass one more piece of Band-Aid legislation designed to try to pick up the pieces of family and child pathology. Have we learned nothing in the course of the last 20 years? Regretfully, I observe that appears to be the case.
I have a number of major concerns with respect to Bill 77 that prevent me from recommending its support on second reading. I do not want to go through a long litany of criticism. I want to set out before the minister tonight some of those very real concerns. In and of themselves they do not add up individually to a major impediment. Taken together, they become an insuperable obstacle to support on second reading. We are going to have to look at these problems very carefully when we get to the committee stage.
Let me deal with my most troubling concern. It has to do with the section on intrusive procedures. I am talking about section 127, on page 106 of the bill, the additional duty of review teams with respect to intrusive procedures. I was shocked to read, set out in a child welfare bill in 1984, a set of procedures for the authorization in regard to children of "(a) medical or chemical experimentation; (b) psychosurgery: (c) non-therapeutic sterilization, or (d) electroconvulsive therapy.
I do not understand it at all. I thought we had a moratorium on nontherapeutic sterilization of children. I thought that moratorium was still in effect. I do not understand what we are doing in setting out procedures for the authorization of nontherapeutic sterilization. I do not understand why we are talking about psychosurgery for children. I assume that is talking about frontal lobotomies. Perhaps the minister could tell us what he is talking about.
For the life of me I do not understand who engages in medical or chemical experimentation on children. That is what it says in the bill. The minister frowns. It says, "Where it is recommended that a child in the care of a service provider undergo (a) medical or chemical experimentation.
That is what it says in the bill. I do not understand that kind of language, and I do not understand the thinking that lies behind it. I would have expected to see in the child welfare bill a section that outlawed medical or chemical experimentation, psychosurgery, nontherapeutic sterilization and electroconvulsive therapy. I mean that sincerely.
9:40 p.m.
I make a modest prediction that people in the 21st century are going to look back at us in the 20th century who used electroconvulsive therapy on people who were mentally ill and say that we were as barbaric as those who used to chain the mentally ill to walls in medieval dungeons.
I think electroconvulsive therapy is barbaric, that it is a clinical fraud and that it should be abandoned as a treatment modality. To see it in a child welfare bill as something that is relevant or appropriate to the treatment of children is quite frankly appalling. We will have to deal with it when we get to committee of the whole House or clause-by-clause discussion in the social development committee.
I could no more support a piece of legislation that had this provision in it than I could fly to the moon. I am appalled that it is in there. I await with incredible interest the explanation of the officials of the ministry and the minister himself as to why it is included in this bill that purports to talk about the welfare of children and not to deal in their brutalization in the name of clinical treatment.
I will try to move even more quickly. I hope that when we deal with the adoption disclosure section we will be able to move forward from the voluntary, passive, adoption disclosure registry that is currently in the act. I say that with some authority as I wrote that section of the act. It was my amendment that passed by a vote of 37 to 36 and resulted in the voluntary disclosure amendment in the 1978 Child Welfare Act.
I started out with the English system of full disclosure. I moved amendments based on that model in the committee. They did not pass and we moved progressively -- I think we went through four or five different approaches to the question of adoption disclosure -- until we got an approach that had the support of a majority of members of the assembly.
It happened to be a narrow majority, a majority of one, but that is the way democracy works. Whether you win by one or 100, it is exactly the same thing. I am pleased the government kept the section in the bill. I am grateful it set up the administrative machinery to see how it would work. I appreciated that very much.
I think there is an opportunity to move to the next step. I suggest, with respect, that the next step is a voluntary disclosure registry that has an active component, and that the ministry give itself the power, if both parties or if even one party is registered on the registry, to search out the missing party, whether it is the birth parent or the adult adoptee, and to determine whether it might be possible to arrange for disclosure of birth identity information. I think that is a reasonable suggestion. When we get to the appropriate point in the clause-by-clause, I hope the ministry is prepared to move on that.
Another item I want to deal with briefly has to do with the payment at children's aid societies and, equally important, the financial base of our 51 children's aid societies. The minister knows as well as I do of the tremendous inequities in the financial base of children's aid societies around the province. That arose from the fact that a children's aid society that was a private and voluntary social agency in a relatively poor community did not have the same financial base as the Children's Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto, the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto or a children's aid society in any of the large urban industrial centres. When the children's aid societies became quasi-public agents, the financial base was never adjusted.
That is reflected in the salary grid. Somebody who works for the public sector of the government of Ontario as a social worker providing social services will earn the same salary for the same kind of work, whether he works in Toronto, Sault Ste. Marie, Cornwall, Kenora, Sudbury or Hamilton. He is doing the job and gets the pay that goes with the job.
If one works for a children's aid society, however, there can be 51 different salary scales depending on the breaks, the luck of geography. The government has never dealt with that fundamental unfairness, that inequity. It resulted in strikes during the 1970s, which have been temporarily curtailed because of anti-inflation legislation. When free collective bargaining is permitted to resume, we will be back into the same jackpot of labour-management strife because of that fundamental and basic unfairness that results from history. It is time the government redressed that and established a basic financial base for all children's aid societies, so that kind of inequity will be eliminated.
Second, I am curious to know what happened to the notion that there was an obligation on the ministry to play fair financially with children's aid societies with the amount of time it takes to approve the budgetary allocation. I am amazed there is nothing in section 20 or section 21 -- I do not see anything, unless I have missed something -- that would set some very clear and rigid time limits on the ministry and the government for the allocation of budgets for children's aid societies and other agencies such as children's mental health centres and group homes.
We are amazed at the kinds of delays tolerated in the social service sector. They are not tolerated in other sectors. We had the example of the minutes of the Family and Children's Services of the District of Kenora. The budget for 1981 was approved in the minutes of April 1983. If this was untypical that would be one thing, but it is not. The delay is chronic and endemic.
All the different systems that have been developed since 1975 to try to deal with this have apparently not been successful. I do not think it is beyond the wit of government to come up with a payment system based on timely budget approval. It might even be a useful prod to bureaucratic inertia if it were in the statute itself. I make that as a suggestion to the minister.
With those remarks and one additional remark about day care, I will conclude. I do not know why day care was excluded from the omnibus children's legislation. Let me speculate on the reason it was excluded. Is it that the government has finally seen the light, finally come to the realization that day care is not and should not be a welfare service? The government has finally recognized day care should not be offered in a welfare context on the basis of means-tested subsidization. No, the government has finally realized day care should be a universal service run through the Ministry of Education and available to all families who require it. I assume that is the reason day care is not in the bill.
Hon. Mr. Drea: We will allocate four billion dollars.
Mr. McClellan: How much? Four billion dollars? Why not four trillion dollars if they want to make up figures? How about four quadrillion dollars a year? We should spend four quadrillion dollars a year on day care. Does that make the minister happy?
Hon. Mr. Drea: Yes.
Mr. McClellan: Good. I am glad. He can make up whatever nonsensical figure he wants.
9:50 p.m.
The point I am trying to make is a simple one. In a modern industrial society in which somewhere between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of women with children are in the work force, it is sheer insane stupidity to try to pretend that day care is a welfare service that can be offered only on the basis of subsidized means testing to those who are poor enough to qualify for it. We will pay a price for this folly down the road.
I assume in my quixotic optimism that the reason day care has not been included in this bill is that, as we gathered from the Minister responsible for Women's Issues (Mr. Welch), he has realized that day care should not be a welfare service, that day care should be available as a matter of right to all families who require it. He is planning to take it out of the welfare ministry, place it in the Ministry of Education where it belongs and establish a network of community day care centres that make use of the space in our schools. We expect very shortly a New Jerusalem. I am sure I am not wrong.
I will simply conclude with a rhetorical question to the minister, which he can answer when he sums up the debate: What ever happened to the local children's services committees, the very essence, nub, heart and kernel of the 1976 reforms, the very first thing that was promised? "I," said the minister, "am going to reform child welfare services by co-ordinating everything through the local children's services committees."
I do not know what happened to them. They seem to have been brutally assassinated; they disappeared. Were they mugged in the corridors of power? How did this great experiment turn into such a fiasco?
Oh, there is the author of the children's services committees himself, the member for Kingston and the Islands (Mr. Norton). What a brilliant idea that was. Perhaps the minister can tell us whatever happened to it.
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I want to speak very briefly to Bill 77. There is only one section of the bill on which I would like to obtain an answer, and I hope the minister can clarify it for me. It is section 2, in which we talk about French-language services.
I congratulate the minister for the initiative of having this section in the bill. As he knows, I feel very strongly about this particular issue, and I am glad to see it there.
I notice the terminology he uses is different from that in other legislation, and perhaps the minister can describe for my benefit how this terminology works. I ask this for the following reason. For instance, if we look at the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs, the office of the co-ordinator of French-language services refers to four areas as what it calls designated areas of the province and an additional seven areas that I guess are considered secondary areas but where French-language services should also be available, making a total of 11 different parts of the province.
The bill does not seem to use the same terminology. It uses the terminology "where appropriate" as being the areas. Does that mean those four areas, those 11 areas, both or both plus additional ones besides? Perhaps the minister can clarify that at the appropriate time.
Hon. Mr. Drea: The broadest possible.
Mr. Boudria: The broadest possible? It is only out of curiosity that I raise the question, and also to indicate to the minister that I am pleased there is such a section in the bill. The minister is indicating it is to apply in a wide area, and I am glad to hear that.
I am told that some of my fellow caucus members insisted that the Council on Franco-Ontarian Affairs make a presentation and that it had an influence in including this section in the bill. I am glad to see, nevertheless, that the section is now included in the bill.
I find it passing strange that the minister had that initiative in his bill and that his colleague the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) also does, but that the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) last week introduced a bill in this House clearly omitting such a section. I remarked to him that if the Minister of Community and Social Services and the Attorney General could do it, so should he.
However, that is a little off the topic, Mr. Speaker, and I know you are going to correct me very soon if I do not get back on track with this.
Those are the only questions I wanted to ask. I want to congratulate the minister on that section being in and just encourage him to clarify for everyone what exactly the expression "where appropriate" in section 2 of the bill will mean. My hope is it means all the so-called designated and secondary areas, as well as other areas where the numbers warrant it.
Perhaps it could be clarified to ensure it describes that in a terminology which is consistent with other government policies. Then everyone will know what this section of the bill means from now on, as opposed to the nods I am getting from the minister tonight which may he contradicted by some staff person at a later time interpreting this particular clause in a different way.
If the minister would just clarify that. If he does not think it needs clarification, that is fine, but I am a little concerned. It uses an expression which I have never seen before in other legislation. The minister seems to have indicated that it includes all the 11 regions plus everything; in other words, wherever appropriate throughout the whole province and in the 11 regions as well.
If that is the case, that is even better than most other ministries and I am very pleased to see that in the bill.
I do not want to address the other sections of the bill. My colleagues have been and will be doing that in the next few moments. I am no longer the critic for the ministry so I will let the rest of my colleagues do that. I wanted to speak briefly to that particular section which I find very important and I thank the minister for the clarification.
Mr. Stokes: Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, I want to speak to the section of the act dealing with young offenders.
I have not had an opportunity to read it over in as much detail as I should have or would have liked to, but I am advised there is very little in here dealing with the problems young native offenders in northern communities find themselves in from time to time.
I know the Attorney General made a trip up to those remote northern communities along the shores of James and Hudson Bays. He was quite intrigued and fascinated with the way in which justice seems to be meted out up there. A good many of the problems are with young offenders. I would like to see some provision in the young offenders section of this act, dealing specifically with young native people. There should be some opportunity for the courts to consult with elders in order to make it possible for the officers of the courts to become better informed about a particular person on a reserve.
As members know, their culture and tradition are entirely different. They tend to look after a lot of their problems. I had the privilege of taking the Thunder Bay district legal aid committee into those communities a few years ago. The members' reaction was that they were able to handle most of their legal problems locally. Stan Jolly, who worked with the committee on native justice for a number of years, was seconded by the Attorney General. He is now in the process of setting up a system whereby native justices of the peace could be set in place so the native people would have more respect for justice and would be more involved in the system.
10 p.m.
The minister will know we have special native constables in a good many of the communities. I would like to see something in this act that would give force to the young offenders section, and would be more relevant to the native people in the far north, that would give them a say and make them a part of it. I think it would work much better.
The native committee on justice made several recommendations to the ministry before this section of the act was drafted. Perhaps we can discuss that when we get into clause-by-clause debate in another forum, but I would like some assurance from the minister that the recommendations made were not ignored arid would give the kind of effect the native people have suggested.
Ms. Copps: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry we do not have comments from some of the members on the government side of the House on this issue because there are a number of areas, both positive and negative, that require some discussion within the context of the Legislature.
Having had the pleasure of serving on the first white paper discussions surrounding the bill and subsequently on the bill itself, I would like to start off by commenting that one of the difficulties I see with the current legislation, and one that was outlined in a dissent I filed with respect to the white paper, is that the minister has purported to bring in an omnibus bill to cover all children's services within Ontario.
Unfortunately, the whole aspect of prevention and access to services before a situation reaches a crisis point has been ignored, not only in the draft but also in the bill we have before us. It has been called by the minister An Act respecting the Protection and Well-being of Children and their Families, but it appears to be an umbrella bill of consolidation of services only for special needs or what in many cases might be considered troubled or special needs children.
I thought in bringing in this legislation the minister and the government would attempt to provide an overview of services and rights for all children in Ontario that would include notions such as prevention and would include a bill of rights for children outlining the rights and responsibilities they share with other members of society, rather than simply zeroing in on the whole issue of a child who may be in need of protection or in need of special services. In view of the increasing thrust we must place on the whole area of prevention in the 1980s, this bill falls far short of consolidating the notion of servicing all children in Ontario.
I appreciate that the steering committee has decided to go ahead with discussions of the Day Nurseries Act come September, but the fact that the ministry has proceeded on this act without any reference to or inclusion of the Day Nurseries Act is a further indication that this piece of legislation is not really designed for all children in Ontario but for kids who have special-needs and kids who were served under the special needs area in the existing legislation that is being consolidated under this umbrella piece of legislation.
Our critic in this area, the member for Windsor-Sandwich (Mr. Wrye), outlined in his presentation that the minister has certainly introduced a number of improvements with respect to the whole tone of the legislation, following input that had been directed from members of the social services sector and a number of other areas. I refer specifically to the change in the declaration of principles. The minister looks at the role of social service agencies not as interlopers or intruders who should only be brought in at the last minute, but as people who can actually facilitate the process.
There was some concern in the first draft that the tone of the document appeared to he somewhat anti-professional and anti-involvement from the social service sector. I think the minister has moved to address that in the bill and he deserves some credit for that.
I am troubled, however, by a couple of underlying issues. The minister addressed one of those issues in his response to the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria), in the discussions on a single issue such as the provision of French-language services.
When we look at the section on Indian and native child and family services, we note that the minister has been left with a tremendous amount of discretionary power. There has been, again, an insistence by the minister that he will introduce measures in the broadest possible terms without specifying in legislation what those terms are going to be.
While the intentions of the minister to be as broad as possible and as comprehensive as possible may he seen to he sincere, I think the difficulty he has in any piece of legislation that leaves a tremendous amount of discretion to him is that when push comes to shove, the minister may change, the direction may change, or both may change. It is important that the legislation spell out very specifically what responsibilities the minister must have if the legislation is going to have some long-term impact.
Likewise, in the definition of French-language services, the minister has included the notion of provision of services where appropriate. "Where appropriate" for the minister may be very different from "where appropriate" for, for example, the French-language advisory committee or l'Association canadienne-française de l'Ontario. It is in that regard that I think we need a broader definition within the legislation itself.
A tremendous effort was made by all members of the committee to come to some kind of consensus on this issue, which was raised by a number of members not only of the social service community, but of the public; that is the whole issue of when we conduct a placement review.
As the minister knows, the current legislation calls for a placement review within a certain period of the institutionalization of a child. We heard from a number of professionals who stated quite clearly that if one looked at the Hamilton Association of Agencies for Treatment and Development model, it is critical that the review be preplacement on a mandatory basis, not on an optional basis, because if we do not have mandatory preplacement review, we may find ourselves in a situation where a child is institutionalized. Once the institutionalization occurs, the powers who have agreed to that institutionalization are not likely to reverse their position.
If one looks, for example, at the involvement of parents who might have a child who is developmentally handicapped; if a decision or consensus is reached to move that child into a group home, once the move is made it is highly unlikely that a post-placement review is going to change the situation or make any kind of substantial difference.
If one looks at the figures that were introduced by the Hamilton AATD model, where it suggested that out of every three children who were considered for institutionalization within the city of Hamilton, on preplacement review, two of those three placements were either modified or were eliminated because the child was able to remain in his own home with the assistance of support services.
What we are suggesting, and I think the point was made by a number of social service agencies throughout the province, is that the notion of a preplacement review must be mandatory; it must not be optional. If there is not a mandatory preplacement review, we will be facing failure of the system in a fashion similar to that pointed out by the AATD in Hamilton.
10:10p.m.
Those kinds of statistics are a pretty damning indictment of the current system when one sees that, after a children's aid society or another agency decides to institutionalize a child, in two out of three cases in the city of Hamilton, or two out of three cases of all children dealt with by the preplacement review committee, the decision to institutionalize was reversed.
If that reversal had been made after institutionalization occurred, in many cases it would be too late. Once parents go through the wrenching decision of agreeing to place their child outside the home in an institution, it is unlikely that decision is going to be reversed by a post-placement review.
It seems to me one of the critical messages that came across to us in the course of our discussions with various groups and individuals was the notion that institutionalization must be reviewed before it occurs. It cannot be reviewed after the fact because of the inability of children to progress through the system if they are suffering from emotional, physical or developmental problems. The more they are moved around the less likely they are to succeed in their placement.
If preplacement review is going to allow two out of three children either to remain in their own homes or to be placed in a less onerous group home situation, then I think we have a responsibility to ensure that the review occurs before the move is made, before children are taken out of their own home and institutionalized.
It should also be pointed out that the residential placement advisory committee reviews that have been cited in the legislation are not applied necessarily to existing placements because of the way the wording has been interpreted under the current bill. Bearing that in mind, I think it also deserves another look by the minister. Not only should we be reviewing placements before they occur in the future, but we should also ensure that the placements that already exist will of necessity be reviewed by the minister and by the government.
Another concern we have with respect to the residential placement advisory committee process is that if the RPAC decision is not accepted, the appeal process occurs through the children's services review board rather than through the family court. We feel a decision to institutionalize a child is important enough that the ultimate onus should not be left up to a children's services review board, but should be made in the context of the court.
The children of Ontario should have at least as many rights as adults who, for example, have been convicted of a crime and end up in jail. They have an appeal process. What we are talking about in institutionalization is taking the children from their home and putting them in a placement. They are placed in an institution, which could have very serious ramifications on them for the rest of their lives. If individuals or families do not agree with such decisions, it seems to me that at the very least they should have recourse to appeal through the courts rather than simply leaving it up to the children's services review board.
The minister is no doubt aware we have been undergoing these discussions as well with respect to the Young Offenders Act. I think there is a tremendous consensus in the community that the division of responsibility between the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ministry of Correctional Services with respect to the Young Offenders Act is going to spell disaster for effective implementation of the federal provisions vis-à-vis the changing of responsibilities and the recognizing of individual rights for our young people. In that regard, we also have some very serious concerns about the implementation of the Young Offenders Act as outlined under section 4 of the legislation.
Another issue touched upon by the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) which I think was probably the most difficult individual issue we dealt with was adoption. One of the benefits, to my mind, of the standing committee on social development to date -- I know the member for Hastings-Peterborough (Mr. Pollock) will agree with me on this -- is that in our two or three years on that committee it has probably been a unique committee in that in many respects we have tried to hammer out a consensus rather than playing polities on a number of issues.
We have tried wherever possible to hammer out a consensus. On the issue of adoption, we hammered out what we all thought was a pretty good compromise. I am sure some of us, myself included, were not totally satisfied with the compromise, but we felt that in the interest of developing a consensus we could move on the issue of disclosure.
To outline this for those members of the House who were not here during those discussions, the current system is a passive registry system where all three parties must consent and must contact the registry in order for contact to occur between a birth parent and a child.
The consensus reached by the standing committee on social development studying this legislation was that because of perceived contracts, which nobody was able to prove existed, and because people who had undergone adoptions in the past presumably did so on the basis there would not be full disclosure, according to the committee, this bill would kick in a system whereby, beginning with adoptions approved in 1984 -- hence we would have a system that would only become operational in many cases 16 or 18 years from now -- the ability of the adopting parent to veto a reunion between a natural birth parent and a child would be wiped out.
We did not feel the adopting parent had the right to veto a reunion between an adopted child and the birth parent once that child reached the age of adulthood. As a group, we suggested a nice compromise might be to adopt a system that exists at present in at least two other provinces. Many members will know, including the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) who made very strong presentations on behalf of Parent Finders, that Parent Finders and many other groups feel there need be no consent to make that contact by any party other than the adopted child himself or herself.
We felt that as a compromise all members of the committee could live with, we would suggest to the government that from this day forward when adoptions take place, a reunion could occur between the child and the natural parent once that child reached the age of adulthood. We would set up a two-party consent system with an active registry that would begin and kick in once the adopted child reaches the age of adulthood.
Even though we reached this compromise that would not satisfy Parent Finders, for example, and many other groups of people who are searching for their roots, we felt it was important enough that adopting parents should not have the right to veto a reunion between natural parents and a child once the child has reached the age of adulthood.
The government in its wisdom, however, chose to ignore the advice of the committee, advice which I might say was ultra-conservative in that the system we were suggesting and upon which there was unanimous agreement would not even begin to kick in until 18 years from now, because it would only affect new adoptions. Unfortunately, what we have been left with is a consensus of the committee that was rejected by the government.
The net result is that there are members on, I believe, at least two sides of the House who feel that since the compromise was rejected we are going to revert to our original positions, which are first, that two-party consent should be invoked from this day forward and second, that it should be invoked as young adoptees reach the current age of adulthood. We cannot find within either the spirit or the letter of the law any contract that states a birth parent should not have the right to reunion with a natural child. There was nothing written in any adoption law we were able to see that said adopting parents should have the right to veto a reunion between natural parents and children, once the children reach the age of 18.
I am sure the minister will be aware there are a lot of emotions involved in this situation and in this kind of a reunion. It seems to me, however, the key question has to be whether there is an expressed desire on the part of the child and on the part of the natural parent to reunite.
10:20 p.m.
If there is that expressed desire, presumably the relationship the adoptive parent has established with the adopted child over the 18 years before that reunion takes place will be secure enough that the relationship between the adopting parents and the child would not be intimidated or in any way compromised by the reunion between the natural parent and the child.
I would like to hear from the minister why this government was unprepared to accept even the most conservative amendment that would have seen an active two-party registry begin, a system where the adopting parents' veto would have been removed 18 years from now.
I do not think we came in with a proposal that was unrealistic or that would have infringed in any way on past adoptions. It would have stated for the record that if a parent were looking at adopting a child currently in 1984, then 18 years from now if that child and the natural parent chose to be reunited, the adoptive parent would not have any right of veto over the child once that child became an adult.
I have not seen anything, either in the letter or the spirit of the law, to suggest that adopting parents should be able to veto reunions between adult adoptees and their natural parents. I would be most interested in the government's response as to why it rejected a three-party consensus developed by the committee.
The committee tried to be very responsible in coming up with an alternative that would not infringe in any way on past adoptions but would deal with a problem that is perceived in the present, not only by natural parents who are seeking their children and children who are seeking their parents but also by adopting parents who appeared before our committee on behalf of Parent Finders to say that they too supported the notion that if a reunion were desired between two parties, the natural parent and the adopted child, that reunion should occur.
We would like to see the involvement of the adopting parent. We think that would be a positive thing. But at the same time we do not feel the adoptive parent should have the right to veto that reunion.
Likewise, when we deal with the whole issue of the age of consent the minister will note that the committee had raised the notion of including the common law issue for the age of consent, rather than arbitrarily putting an age on it, because a child at the age of 12 or 14 in one instance may have a much greater capacity to understand and enter into obligations than another child. That is why it was suggested to us by the Ontario Medical Association and others that the common law be used with respect to age of consent.
The minister will also be aware that there was no result on the issue of foster guardianship.
The minister will no doubt be aware of press reports this week that deal with the ethical and moral questions surrounding frozen embryos in Australia. The minister and the government in their wisdom chose to ignore the ethical and moral questions that must be answered if we are going to look at the issue, for example, of surrogate parenting. Many of those issues are part and parcel of the reality in Ontario today.
We are dealing with the Child and Family Services Act, an act that is supposed to deal with the protection and wellbeing of children and their families. To ignore even a discussion surrounding the issue of surrogate parenthood and many of the other ethical and moral questions surrounding in vitro fertilization -- the minister may shake his head but there is a real legal dilemma that is being faced by parents --
Hon. Mr. Drea: They are before the Law Reform Commission of Ontario. The member knows that.
Ms. Copps: The minister has suggested this is an act that deals with the wellbeing of all children and their families in Ontario. I am suggesting there should have been at least a mention or some consideration given to these issues.
If he has had a chance to go over Hansard, he may be aware that I raised this issue when the discussion began originally on the discussion paper. I have never received an adequate response as to why the whole issue of surrogate parenthood and in vitro fertilization was ignored in this act.
The minister also sat out on the age of consent issue. He has suggested that the reason we did not want to go to the common law for age of consent is that we were going to have minors who would have access to birth control. The minister is well aware that this is an absolute red herring in the sense that the issue of birth control is one that presumably remains the domain of the prescribing authorities, which would be the medical profession.
The medical profession in general is not covered under child and family services but practises independently and uses the common law age of consent in the context of its own profession. That is why the OMA came before us and suggested that common law be included as the age of consent in this particular document: to bring it in line with, for example, the current practices of the medical profession.
The minister instead chose to use an arbitrary age, which in many cases is going to handcuff the social workers and other professionals across Ontario when they are looking at the issue of counselling. By bringing in this arbitrary age, the minister has succeeded in saying a young person who happens to be suicidal, who happens to have an alcohol problem, who happens to have a very serious drug problem, cannot get any help below a certain age without his parents' consent. This is simply because the minister has used this arbitrary age of consent rather than moving towards the common law capacity, which was suggested to him by the OMA.
There has been some discussion about the prohibited measures category. I would have to add my voice to that of the member for Bellwoods, who said here in the House tonight that he cannot believe this government would not prohibit, for example, drug experimentation, nontherapeutic sterilization, psychosurgery and electroconvulsive therapy.
If the minister believes electroconvulsive therapy is not being carried out in our provincial community and social services institutions at present, I ask him to read Hansard and presentations from social workers who appeared before us to tell us that in their estimation it may even be occurring in some provincial institutions which deal with children under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The area cited in the presentations -- and I am sure the ministry people have had a chance to follow up on that -- was the Thunder Bay area.
The minister may very well say electroconvulsive therapy does not currently exist in any provincial institutions that cover children across Ontario. If he believes that, and if he feels it is important for it to be prohibited, then it should be proscribed in the law so that drug experimentation on minors is not allowed. A moratorium on nontherapeutic sterilization has already been declared, and it should be proscribed in the law.
The whole issue of electroconvulsive therapy also should be proscribed in the law.
Frankly, I think the statements which preceded this particular bill, in which the ministry said it felt these procedures were so irreversible and so intrusive that they should be included in legislation, were very accurate statements and should be upheld.
I understand the minister's concern in responding to the OMA, but even for the purposes of provincial institutions which fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, I think there should be a prohibited measures category reintroduced into the legislation.
Likewise, there are a number of intrusive procedures which have been recognized and regulated in the legislation. There is the other catchall phrase which says, "and any other intrusive procedures which may be designated by regulation."
If we feel intrusive procedures are important enough to be enshrined in legislation in the act, then likewise, new intrusive procedures which may come about as a result of new technological interventions in the whole area of treatment should also be introduced, not by regulation but by legislation. They can have some fairly significant and, in some cases, irreversible effects on the lives of our children.
I am glad to see the minister has removed the sexist reference in the legislation to the child adopting the religion of the father. There may be some ambiguity about the "parent," because the way the act is currently drafted, it states the child will receive the religion of the parent, not parents. If one is talking in the singular, there may be some question as to court interpretation of what constitutes a parent.
I am sorry the minister has not responded to the concerns of the Canadian Jewish Congress about the inclusion of all religious faiths. When the act makes special mention of the Catholic and Protestant faiths with respect to the children's aid societies, there should also be recognition given of other religious faiths. That was brought to the attention of the minister by the Canadian Jewish Congress. Unfortunately, we have seen no change in the minister's definition with respect to religion.
The final point I would like to make relates to the issue of curfew. The committee recommended that children should not be allowed to work in a place to which the public has access in late hours. The curfew provision has not taken this particular aspect of concern under consideration.
Bearing in mind we are about to adjourn, I would like to say we have outlined some very serious concerns we have about this legislation. We hope we will be able to use some of the time in committee this summer to iron out some of the difficulties, particularly with respect to the residential placement advisory committees as well as the adoption procedure and the intrusive and prohibitive measures. These issues in their current status are not acceptable. For that reason, we will be unable to support this legislation.
The Deputy Speaker: In recognizing the minister, I might just point out that the clock is coming very close to 10:30 p.m.
Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of that. I am prepared to adjourn the debate, but there is one point, notwithstanding an effective reverse closure on the minister, that should be mentioned tonight.
To end the confusion about section 23 of the act, we will be bringing in amendments in committee to clauses 23(1)(g) and 23(1)(h) which will change the word "agency" to "society." It is mentioned three times in those two clauses.
In other words, section 23 will only apply to a children's aid society. It will not apply, nor was it ever intended to apply, to the 1,800 voluntary agencies, youth agencies, etc. It was intended to apply to exactly what the member for Scarborough West was complaining about tonight. It would make public the various aspects of any disciplinary action against a children's aid society. To end the confusion, that will be changed when we go to committee.
On motion by Hon. Mr. Drea, the debate was adjourned.
The House adjourned at 10:33 p.m.