Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Sara Austin
Sara Austin is CEO of Children First Canada, a national child advocacy organization. She has been a consistent voice for accountability in Ontario's child welfare system, calling out the rising death toll and the gap between the government's stated commitments and its actions. On the 2023 death statistics, Austin said: "There is clear evidence that children are not cared for and protected, that the system is failing them and that we need to do better," and noted that children with open case files "should be within a safety net... yet we're seeing clearly these are the children who are the highest risk."
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.
As CEO of Children First Canada, Austin provided expert commentary on Ontario's rising child welfare death toll and called for systemic accountability — including after the government stopped producing aggregate death data.