The Bureaucracy of Broken Children: How CAS Escapes Accountability While Kids Die in the Dark
- Rowen Fraser
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
The history of the Children's Aid Society is long and complicated. Originally before 1893, there was no unified child welfare service in Ontario. Proponents of child welfare would instead congregate as community organizations led as private charities. In the late 19th century child welfare pioneer John Joseph Kelso championed the creation of the Children’s Protection Act of 1893. This act would establish the base of all future CAS operations in Ontario. After this act all CAS branches were established from existing independent, community-led non-profit entities. The government at the time did not have the political appetite to form a new ministry, and instead allowed them to maintain their private charity status. On top of remaining independent from the government they were issued sweeping powers to apprehend children they deemed to be at risk. As private organizations, they remained fundamentally insulated from direct provincial operation. This newly founded organization now wielded all the power of the government, with none of the accountability.
By the mid-20th century, with their power well established, CAS had evolved into one of the most powerful public agencies in Ontario. They were accountable to virtually nobody, and under their own direction they embarked on a quest that would turn into one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history. The Sixties Scoop as it is known now was a organized campaign of systemic oppression on the indigenous community of Canada. Despite its hallmark name it actually began in the 1950s. It would accelerate throughout the 60s and 70s. During these decades an estimated 20,000-30,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in communities and homes that were equally distant both physically and culturally from their homes.
Individual regional societies would operate under their own local boards. They would have minimal standardized provincial oversight, allowing them to obfuscate the true nature of their goals. The ultimate result would be an attempted cultural erasure. Similar efforts were undertaken by the British crown in regions they had previously conquered. These innocent children were placed into non-Indigenous homes across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Often they would never see their families again. Some would never even know the families they were taken from. The children in these programs would be subjected to horrific physical, sexual, and psychological abuses in the name of assimilation. The Sixties Scoop was not a well-intentioned program that went off the rails. It was the largest case of child abduction Ontario has ever seen. The perpetrators of these heinous acts have mostly managed to evade justice.
To this day CAS remains unaccountable to anyone except their own internal policies. Unlike standard government ministries, the dozens of regional Children’s Aid Societies across Ontario are private, independent charities. They are governed by self-appointed, local volunteer boards of directors rather than elected officials government employees. While the government has the control of the macroeconomics of the agency, they lack the ability within the current framework to provide oversight to the agency on a line-item basis. They are also removed from day-to-day operational policy and casework decisions and outcomes. This is a massive oversight that has resulted in terrible abuses of children and parents involved in the system. The most difficult precedent to overcome for CAS is the strict statutory privacy and confidentiality laws surrounding their work. While these measures were originally meant to protect children, they have warped into a weird method of data censorship. CAS doesn't want us knowing the outcomes of their decisions. Additionally, caseworkers and executives are employees of the specific non-profit corporation. This means they are not provincial public servants. This further isolates their actions from typical accountability standards.
The most disgusting disservice done to Ontario residents is a recent provision that the province no longer tracks statistics regarding children who have died under CAS care. The numbers prior reveal a terrifying picture for anyone who has children involved in this system. Starting in 2020 Ontario detailed the number of deaths, age groups, and causes of death for children who died under the care of a Children's Aid Society, or had an open file, or whose file had been closed within the previous year. The tracked numbers from those years were extremely troubling. We know that there were 104 deaths in 2020, 129 in 2021, 121 in 2022, and 134 in 2023. An average of one dead child every 3 days. When journalists submitted a Freedom of Information request in early 2026 to access the data for recent years the ministry issued a decision letter stating that "no responsive records exist". The reason they gave was that the tracking report had been eliminated. Internal documents revealed civil servants were concerned that the mounting death counts would overshadow the government's announcements regarding child welfare audits.
Tomorrow in a Milton, Ontario courtroom Becky Hamber and Brandy Cooney are due to be sentenced. The Burlington couple was recently found guilty of murder in the first degree of a 12-year-old Indigenous boy in their care. In addition they also face charges of torturing and confining his younger brother. The trial exposed a rotten system. A vulnerable child wasted away from severe malnourishment and neglect while zip-tied in a basement prison along side his younger brother. There was a storied list of medical professionals and caseworkers who had sounded alarms. In fact the abuse was officially verified and documented by CAS. It was acknowledged in reports years before the death of this boy. In fact it wasn't just professionals, a long line of neighbors and teachers and hospital staff also had submitted multiple complaints about Hamber and Cooney's parenting methods.
Despite a child dying in the most horrific way imaginable the response has been tepid. Even the mayor of Burlington did not make a statement on this issue for 3 years. She was eventually forced to make a muted statement on a single social media post while hiding behind her indigenous outreach coordinator. This was due to advocacy from local aspiring politicians and also a statement read in chambers by her political rival Lisa Kearns. The public is left with very little transparency regarding how these prospective adoptive parents were vetted, monitored, and left unchecked. Despite multiple requests for clarity on how something so awful could happen right under their nose, the agency still clings to the veil of privacy. It is interesting to note that upon discovering the child's death, his younger brother was immediately remanded to the custody of his biological mother. The same biological mother the agency deemed unfit to have custody before this incident occurred. This indicates that they may not have had a valid reason for removal in the first place. One thing that can be said definitively is that if CAS had never intervened in this particular case, both boys would be alive and happy living with their biological parents.
The July 3rd sentencing will only penalize the immediately guilty. This is not an acceptable outcome. We should not rest until we determine who had decision making power on this case to a)remove the children from their biological parents, b)move the children far away from their biological parents to adopt them to a couple who openly admitted they wouldn't educate them on their cultural heritage c)refused to intervene to help these children that were obviously in medical crisis due to severe malnutrition. As for the reasons this all happened we can only speculate. Everything else is locked behind a wall of shadow, propped up by a dying claim that secrecy is for the benefit of the children that keep dying on their watch. The only thing that can allow us to move forward from this heinous crime is the full accountability of those who administrated the failures. Join me in calling for a full audit of this, and other files from the Halton CAS. Join me in calling for a reform in the child welfare services. Join me in my quest for reconciliation with the indigenous communities who have experienced this horror for far too long. Join me, or stand against me.
References
Legislation and Statutes
Child, Youth and Family Services Act, S.O. 2017, c. 14.
Governs the mandate, privacy laws, and structural operations of child protection services and private Children’s Aid Societies across Ontario.
An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected and Dependent Children (The Children's Protection Act), S.O. 1893, c. 45.
The foundational 1893 Ontario statute that established the initial legal structure granting private, charitable Children's Aid Societies the authority to apprehend children.
Public Reports and Historical Inquiries
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Provides the documented historical framework for the systematic removal of Indigenous children during the Sixties Scoop by child welfare authorities.
Office of the Auditor General of Ontario. (2022). Value-for-Money Audit: Child Protection Services (Systems and Oversight). Toronto, ON: King’s Printer for Ontario.
Outlines the structural relationship, funding models, and accountability boundaries between individual regional societies and the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.
Legal and Judicial Proceedings
R. v. Hamber and Cooney, 2026 ONSC (Ontario Superior Court of Justice).
Official criminal trial record regarding the first-degree murder, torture, and unlawful confinement charges tried in Milton, Ontario, stemming from the 2022 death of a 12-year-old child in foster/adoptive care.
Media and Investigative Journalism Records
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News. (2024–2026). Ongoing regional coverage of the Milton Superior Court trial proceedings, publication ban directives under the CYFSA, and community advocacy responses to the Burlington foster care tragedy.