🇨🇦 Ontario legal system puts bureaucratic red tape ahead of mothers who had newborns seized by the state

Mothers targeted by birth alerts — a dystopian scheme where hospitals reported pregnant women to child welfare agencies so their babies could be snatched at delivery — can sue the Ontario government, but not the 49 Children's Aid Societies that actually issued the alerts. Why? A 2002 procedural rule requiring each named defendant to have a corresponding plaintiff. That means finding 49 traumatized women willing to publicly attach their names to lawsuits against the very agencies that tore their families apart. Lawyers confirmed the policy disproportionately targeted Indigenous and racialized mothers — convenient language for a system that ran roughshod over civil liberties until 2020.

The state apparatus that wielded unchecked power over vulnerable families now hides behind procedural gatekeeping. Accountability delayed is accountability denied, and Ontario's legal elites know it.

🍁 Maple Chronicles