Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he is willing to take a “wider” view of child welfare in the province to ensure the tragic death of a four-year-old child found in a Toronto dumpster is not repeated.
In May 2022, the body of a small girl was found in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood, with investigators suggesting she could have died the previous summer.
Extensive reporting by the Toronto Star found the girl was on the radar of — and had been cared for by — both the Toronto Children’s Aid Society and its York Region counterpart. Shortly after her child welfare file was closed, she died.
“It’s an absolute tragedy — just think of this poor little girl, four years old,” Ford said on Wednesday. “I believe the system failed her and you never let that happen again.”
The premier’s comments come as data from his government, recently obtained by Global News, shows that a child involved with Ontario’s care system dies every three days on average.
An annual summary created for the province’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services showed that, between 2020 and 2022, a total of 354 children associated with Ontario’s care system died. The information captures children who died while living in care or with social work files that are either open or closed within 12 months of their death.
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The data showed that, while a portion of the deaths were reported among kids in the care of a children’s aid society, the majority were children with open case files. A significant number had also had their files recently closed.
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The largest cause of death in all three years was listed as undetermined, with roughly one-third of deaths in all three years unclear. Medical deaths made up the next largest category in all three years, followed by accidental deaths. Suicides accounted for between seven and 11 per cent of the deaths recorded in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
The data amplified growing calls for action from the provincial government, sparked by the fresh details unearthed by the Star on the death of the girl in a Toronto dumpster.
“We have ample data to show that we are failing our children. There is clear evidence that children are not cared for and protected, that the system is failing them and that we need to do better,” Sara Austin, the founder of Children First Canada, said in a recent interview with Global News.
“This is a crisis. We have been saying for years that the child welfare system is failing to protect our children.”
The government is currently in the middle of a review of how children’s aid operates and, on Wednesday, Ford suggested he was open to a more radical rethink of care.
“I think we got to make sure it never happens again, no matter if it takes a wider scope to look at it,” he said. “We need to do everything we can to make sure no little boy or girl will ever face this again.”
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