Child-Welfare Industrial Complex

August 13, 2012 permalink

A recent rally in Calgary has produced a press report below, a video report YouTube and local copy (mp4) and two photos: [1] [2].

Photo source: Facebook, Jamie Sullivan

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Canadian children succumb to 'child-welfare-industrial complex'

Sun Aug 12, 2012 1:59AM, Joshua Blakeney, Press TV, Calgary

Concerned citizens who support reform of Canada's child welfare policy assembled in front of the Calgary Courthouse this week to educate the public on the shortcomings of Alberta's child welfare system.

More and more parents are finding their actions being scrutinized by social workers. And when children are removed from families their safety is not guaranteed.

Alberta has a dark history of legalized sterilization programs and other eugenicist policies. Indeed eugenics laws, which allowed the state to decide who could and could not have children, were only repealed in their entirety in 1972. But now, bereaved parents and child-protection activists claim, there is a similar form of state-sanctioned brutality being visited upon the most vulnerable members of Canadian society via the increasingly privatized and deregulated so called “Child-Welfare System”.

Activists allege that the profit-driven imperatives of the influential pharmaceutical industry contribute to deaths of children under the state's auspices.

Statistics suggest that there may be a correlation between the privatized model of so called child-welfare in Canada and increased rates of child-apprehension. A comparative study conducted at a British university indicated that Alberta’s children were being disproportionately apprehended by the state in comparison with other Western jurisdictions

The study demonstrated that while, for example, Japan only apprehended - 17 children out of every 10,000 that the government of the Canadian province of - Ontario apprehended 64 per 10,000 children whilst - Alberta distinguished itself by taking 111 children per 10,000

The Alberta government maintains that more children would suffer if they reduced the amounts of children they extricate from families. Yet analyst have argued that the government's time and money would be better invested by subsidizing food and housing costs and otherwise addressing the socio-economic problems which degenerate families.

Source: Press TV