Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Irwin Elman
Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth (former)
Irwin Elman served as Ontario's Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth from 2008 until the Ford government abolished his office on April 30, 2019. His office had a statutory right to be notified when a child welfare-connected child died — a right he used to scrutinize systemic failures and push for accountability. When Ford dissolved the office, Elman warned it would make vulnerable children invisible to public accountability. His prediction proved accurate: the Ombudsman who inherited partial duties was not given death-notification rights, and by 2026 the ministry had stopped producing aggregate death data entirely. Elman has continued to speak out, asking: "These children should live through our attempts to protect them... what lower bar do we have?"
Connected Scandals
Ontario's Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services quietly stopped producing its annual reports tracking child welfare-connected deaths — reports that showed the number rising every year, reaching 134 in 2023, one every three days. Internal government documents show officials flagged the death statistics as a PR problem that could "overshadow" a planned announcement. When Global News filed an FOI in early 2026, the ministry said the records didn't exist.
Former Provincial Advocate whose independent office — with statutory rights to be notified of child welfare deaths — was abolished by the Ford government in 2019. Elman's abolition was the first step in dismantling child welfare accountability; the suppression of death reports in 2024–25 was the second.