3 Chapter 3 The Canadian Foster Care System

I chose the topic of foster care in Canada because it was an interesting backstory in The Lost Ones that seemed to have a bigger picture than what readers get from the novel. I previously didn’t have any knowledge of this subject and researching it has been very eye opening. It is important to know more about the foster care system in Canada in order to better understand the novel The Lost Ones. There is an ongoing crisis within the indeginous foster care system in Canada that is in dire need of a solution. Having more knowledge of this crisis helps readers to have a deeper understanding of The Lost Ones because of the characters’ direct connection to foster care.

To begin, The Lost Ones is a novel that touches heavily on adoption, specifically in the indeginous community. The main character Nora, as well as her biological daughter Bonnie, are both indegenious. There are many times throughout the novel where Nora shows this sense of regret for giving Bonnie up to the hands of a family she thought would protect her. One example from Nora states, “I know that the only way to make sure that someone is safe and warm and happy is to have eyes on them at all times. Do not trust caretakers, no matter how many hopeful letters of recommendation they bear” (Kamal, p.143). Though Nora doesn’t specifically discuss the indegenious foster care crisis, she does discuss issues indegenious people face. The text says, “There’s a whole highway in the north of the province stained by the tears of indigenous girls and women who weren’t blond enough to matter, whose families are still looking for justice. This lack of justice isn’t isolated to a single highway, either. It is more like a cancer that has spread through every segment of Canada’s social and political systems, generating press during election times and buzzwords like ‘the missing’ and ‘murdered’” (Kamal, p.41). The novel never specifies whether the events that take place are because of the corrupt foster care system or just by chance, but it’s impossible to ignore the real life connection. Acknowledging this connection helps readers to more thoroughly understand The Lost Ones and the discussion of foster care within the novel.

The Tyee brings one of several articles to provide information on this ongoing Canadian crisis. Their article has much evidence to support this argument by including statistics and facts about the indegenious children in foster care. According to “How Canada Created a Crisis in Indigenous Child Welfare”, 52% of children in foster homes under the age of 15 are indegenious (Hyslop). Thus, I thought the biggest issue of the indengenious foster care system that the article reviewed was the separation from culture. The Tyee states, “For Indigenous youth, the issues are worse. Placements with non-Indigenous families separate them from their communities, and even expose them to denigration of their culture” (Hyslop). A big issue Hyslop discusses is the homelessness factor. The article says, “Across Canada, kids in and from the foster care system make up 60 percent (Links to an external site.) of homeless youth, and a third of our homeless adults (Links to an external site.)” (Hyslop). Additionally, this source heavily addresses the crisis specifically in the province of Manitoba where it was discovered that 60% of children in the foster care system were indigenous (Hyslop). The government is fully aware of the crisis but has ignored this injustice for decades. In fact, The Tyee claims that the government created a system to keep indengenious kids in the foster care system (Hyslop). This specific source speaks on the actual youth within the system and the problems they are facing, while the other sources differentiate some.

In addition, CBC News offers their take on this Canadian crisis with the article “Canadian foster care in crisis, experts say”, but tackles a different subject of the topic. CBC News discusses the problems directly in the foster care housing and how it affects the whole system. The article begins, “Some children are placed in foster care without full safety checks while others wind up in supervised apartments or overcrowded homes, say child advocates who warn of a deepening crisis across the country” (The Canadian Press). Some of the largest problems with the system include overcrowded homes and inadequate screenings. This connects to Nora’s quote in The Lost Ones, as she knows there can never be enough screenings to truly protect a child. The article goes as far to state that “some caregivers had criminal records involving sexual offences, but were used because the welfare system was desperate for a placement” (The Canadian Press). I found it interesting when CBC discussed the province Saskatchewan as one of the highest for number of children in the foster care system, as Saskatchewan is the province with the second largest Aboriginal population. This article addresses the importance of providing foster parents with the proper things. Tom Waldock, a child welfare specialist, says that in order to begin tackling this crisis, foster parents need more training, recognition, and compensation (The Canadian Press). This a good source of evidence to prove how bad things get when the system is corrupt from the inside out.

Next, The Guardian provides another perspective of the crisis with their article, “Ratio of indigenous children in Canada welfare system is ‘humanitarian crisis’”. The author provides information on how indengious children are specifically singled out and, in a sense, ties both of the previous articles together. A common statistic among all three articles is that the crisis is the worst in the province of Manitoba, where over 90% of children in foster care are indigenous (Kassam). The article states, “In 2016, there were 4,300 indigenous children under the age of four in foster care across Canada, according to government statistics. (Links to an external site.) While 7% of children across Canada are Aboriginal, (Links to an external site.) they account for nearly half of all the foster children in the country” (Kassam). If this isn’t the most confirming piece of evidence for this crisis, then I don’t know what is. Kassam also discusses inadequate housing, but adds there are major problems with food security and mental health issues. According to this source, youth suicide rates are 21 times higher for indigenous females and 10 times higher for males when comparing to non-indigenous youth (Kassam). The sad reality is that these are only a few of the heartbreaking statistics surrounding the foster care crisis. This article provides a look at the crisis on a broader scale to see just how badly indigenious children are being affected. This source really ties into The Lost Ones and how the crisis was seen in several aspects of the novel.

To conclude, I believe this information is more than enough evidence for anyone to acknowledge that there is an ongoing crisis in Canada’s indegenious foster care system. This crisis is doing so much damage to Canada’s future generations, leaving children in danger, and causing so much displacement for the indengenious. Canada’s indengenious foster kids are being neglected and a proper fix is long overdue. This real life problem has a big connection to The Lost Ones. The novel gives a good inside look to the indengenious foster care system and also touches on the problems indengenious women are facing in Canada. As a indengious foster kid, Bonnie faces many of the challenges discussed in the articles. She struggled with her identity that was separate from her white family, she often rebelled against her adoptive parents, and was in a toxic household. To have more knowledge on this crisis helps make the bigger connection with The Lost Ones and its discussion of foster care. It’s clear that the crisis affected both Nora and Bonnie, but learning more about it helps to view things on a larger scale. I now how a better understanding of the characters and their actions in regards to what they might have endured involving the indigenous foster care crisis in Canada.

Works Cited

“Canadian Foster Care in Crisis, Experts Say | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 19 Feb. 2012, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-foster-care-in-crisis-experts-say-1.1250543.

Hyslop, Katie. “How Canada Created a Crisis in Indigenous Child Welfare.” The Tyee, The Tyee, 9 May 2018, https://thetyee.ca/News/2018/05/09/Canada-Crisis-Indignenous-Welfare/.

Kamal, Sheena. The Lost Ones. William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

Kassam, Ashifa. “Ratio of Indigenous Children in Canada Welfare System Is ‘Humanitarian Crisis’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Nov. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/04/indigenous-children-canada-welfare-system-humanitarian-crisis.