Two Biggest Criminal Organizations
in Canada: The Toronto and Catholic Children’s Aid Societies?
Every year
thousands of families become victims of the workers of the Children’s Aid
Societies ferocious tactics of trafficking of children for profit. The government
and the Ministry of Children and Family Services are responsible and accomplices
for these committed abductions. Not to mention the violent attacks of seizure to
children that cause both pain and suffering of children and parents. It
is indescribable how children are subject to psychological and physically torture from the
society’s workers, police, children lawyers, judges, foster parents…Traumas and
destructions that children have to life for the entire lives.
Gathering race data will help children’s aid societies
stop discriminatory practices: Editorial
Children’s aid societies in Ontario
have agreed to collect data on the race of children and families they serve.
That’s the first step to ensuring racism and discrimination don’t play any role
in the scooping up of kids into care.
“There is an
acknowledged disproportionality, disparity and discrimination in services
provided to Black families by child welfare agencies across North America,”
agency officials wrote.
The Star
applauded the report at the time and called on every CAS in the province – and,
indeed, the country – to follow the Toronto branch’s lead by collecting and
sharing race-based data. Only then, we argued, could we begin to understand and
address whatever systemic discrimination exists.
This week,
some eight months later, a group representing most of Ontario’s children’s aid
societies has finally agreed to do just that.
The welcome
move comes a year and a half after a series of stories in the Star revealed
that 42 per cent of children and youth in care of the Children’s Aid Society of
Toronto are black, despite the fact that black Torontonians comprise only 8 per
cent of the city’s under-18 population. What’s more, the investigation found
that once placed in care, black kids stay longer than any other group.
Star
reporters Sandro Contenta, Jim Rankin and Laurie Monsebraaten also found that
the problem wasn’t limited to big cities or black children. In many
communities, the disproportionate placement of indigenous kids in the system is
a significant cause for concern. First Nations children comprise 23 per cent of
those in provincial care, while only 2.5 per cent of Ontarians under 18 are
aboriginal.
Despite
those disturbing statistics, and the persistent urging of Ontario’s human
rights commissioner, very few children’s aid societies have been collecting
data at all, never mind making them public.
That this is
about to change – a consistent approach to collecting and sharing data is
expected within the year – is a leap forward. Vigilance and transparency are
the first steps in weeding out the often subtle discrimination that seems to
tilt the system against black and aboriginal kids in a variety of ways.
Poverty is a
well-established factor in placing kids in care – and this undoubtedly
underlies to some extent the troubling statistics we already have. But only
once we have province-wide information can we begin to determine to what extent
economic factors are compounded by, say, racial profiling by police or cultural
ignorance among teachers.
The power to
remove a child from his or her family home is one of the state’s most
disruptive and Ontarians must be assured that it is being used judiciously. Of
course, children must be protected from bad situations, but so, too, must
families be protected from excessive state interference due to the colour of
their skin. Only now that Ontario’s children’s aid societies have agreed to
shine a light on the problem, can we begin to fix it.
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