Photo from “Powerful As God – The Children’s Aid Societies of Ontario ” YouTube.
“People find it so hard to believe that a children’s aid society could act maliciously. It just goes outside of what people believe.”
-Ryerson University Research Ethics Board facilitated ethics oversight for the documentary. Powerful As God, won the MADA award at Commffest Film Festival in 2012.
For parents with children under the age of 16, the Ontario Children’s Aid Society (CAS) is the most powerful agency in Ontario. Its mandate is to protect the lives of abused children and orphans. The province’s caring public has spared no measure to protect its children by empowering the agency with laws and money that enable it to execute the people’s will and do its job effectively.
Through interviews with witnesses and seasoned experts, this documentary film explores the workings of the CAS. It asks questions fundamental to the blakout project. How are employees of a publicly funded agency using their power? How are children and parents affected by the process? Are there factors that could mitigate a noble and compassionate public initiative to reverse-course? Are your children’s lives at stake? Who are the oppressed and what role does money play? Is this a widespread systemic issue? And if so, what is the cost and risk to society? Who is accountable? And finally, if the system is broken, how would you fix it without leaving the vulnerable exposed to harm? Read More.
The Drugging of Children in Foster Care
Misdiagnosing foster children with exotic psychiatric disorders, then pumping them full of expensive psychotropic drugs, which they’ll be dependent on for the rest of their lives, has many profitable advantages for the Children’s Aid Society.
Children live out their lives in a drugged stupor, making them easy to manage for minimum-wage-earning young adults in group homes. Since the drugs are conveniently paid for by the Ministry of Health, and not out of the Children’s Aid budget, the drug solution is a free benefit to the agency.
Further, both the pharmaceutical companies and the psychiatrists profit. If challenged, the Children’s Aid Society will stop at nothing to persecute the parent, grandparent, foster parent or loving guardian who dares advocate for the mental health of the child. The long term impact on society is substantial and weighs heavily on social services and the justice system, long after these children are no longer the responsibility of the agency that raised them. More.
Illegal Apprehensions
Every family and child in Ontario is vulnerable to the agency’s authority. Poor parents and children are at even greater risk.
The Children’s Aid Society can remove a child from a home, with or without a reason.
While the law requires the agency to obtain a warrant for an apprehension, they rarely do – and they get away with it in court. This behaviour encourages malicious behaviour from teachers and principals, neighbours, adversaries, and health-care providers to use the agency as a weapon to avenge a personal vendetta – one of the most common reasons the agency is called.
A parent best be careful not to swear at the principal, challenge a child’s teacher, argue with a malicious neighbour, or irritate a medical professional at the hospital – because the odds are against them. All it takes is a phone call. No warrant required. More.
Abused in Care: Suing the CAS
The long-term consequences to society are often witnessed in a courtroom, decades after the abuse in a foster or group home has occurred. Sexual and physical abuse in foster care and group homes is more common than not – a stark contradiction to why a child goes into care.
Will suing improve how children are cared for and treated by the Children’s Aid Society? Settlements are a weight on the payer. Insurance companies most often pay out the settlements. Thus, the onus lies with the insurance company to either reexamine the type of care that children are receiving with the Children’s Aid Society and implement new guidelines, or else raise the insurance premiums and let the tax payer flip the bill. More.
View the entire documentary here.
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