The Decibel - A big step forward for B.C. mothers subjected to ‘birth alerts’

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

“Birth alerts” were a controversial practice in several Canadian provinces that allowed hospitals and child-welfare agencies to flag pregnant patients they deemed to be high-risk without their knowledge or consent. They were in place until as recently as 2023 in Quebec. Last week, a proposed settlement worth $66-million was reached in a class action lawsuit over British Columbia’s use of birth alerts. Across the country, several other class actions are underway. Andrea Woo is a staff reporter for the Globe, based in Vancouver. She’s on the show to explain the effects of birth alerts on mothers and the significance of the B.C. class action suit. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There has been a significant step forward for mothers in British Columbia who were targeted by a controversial policy called birth alerts. The policy ended in 2019, but it would sometimes result in infants being taken away shortly after being born. But last week, a proposed settlement worth $66 million was reached in a class action suit representing these mothers. BC wasn't the only province that issued birth alerts, so there are other class actions underway across the country. Today, we're talking to Andrea Wu. She's a staff reporter for the Globe, based in Vancouver. She'll explain the significance of the BC class action suit,

what it means for the other cases out there, and how it could help the women and children who got caught up in the birth alert practice. I'm Madeline White, in for Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Andrea. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. So to start, I was wondering if you could just kind of explain what the birth alert policy was. Birth alerts were a notification system that was used by several provinces where child welfare agencies would notify hospitals and fled. expectant mothers that they deemed to be high risk without the knowledge or the consent of those

mothers. In some cases, this would lead to the apprehension of the newborn within hours of birth. And so when we're talking about high risk here, I just want to be precise in that terminology because it's kind of vague, but essentially what we're saying is that child welfare agencies were saying the mothers were high risk to their children potentially. Is that right? So that is one of the many problematic things about that is that the whole thing is kind of vague. It could have been that the mother was high risk, potentially at harm or at risk to herself, potentially at risk to the baby. Potentially she was not high risk at all, but someone felt that she was.

Okay, so we're going to get into how these alerts were flagged and what criteria was being used to determine which women got birth alerts or not. But before that, can we just talk about what it was like for the expectant mothers? Like, what would happen in terms of their experience in giving birth after they were flagged with a birth alert? So without them knowing, the hospital would then alert child welfare agencies or authorities when that mom presented to hospital to give birth. And in instances where the child is apprehended, the trauma and the stress and the violation is all very apparent. But even when a child is not apprehended, being the subject of a birth alert could alter that woman's course of health care. So Michelle Siegel, she is one of the lawyers representing class members in this action.

She described that some mothers and babies would be subject to unnecessary drug testing, or hospital staff would discourage or prohibit breastfeeding, or there would be a denial of rooming in with your newborn. So the newborn would be taken to another room right after birth and you wouldn't have that skin to skin without being told why. There could be surveillance in the room, which would be very bizarre and, again, not explained.

You could be in a hospital ward that is locked or you could be interrogated by strangers who are assessing their capacity to care for their child, but again, they are not told what's going on and why are they being interrogated right after birth? Yeah, that's all very concerning, especially since the women would not have known why any of that was happening at the time.

So now can we talk about what we know about who tended to be flagged with a birth alert? We don't have complete data, but we do know that the practice disproportionately affected indigenous women and families. So of the available figures, for example, from January 1st, 2018 to September 16, 2019, BC issued 423 birth alerts.

Of those, mothers in 228 cases, so that's 54% identified as indigenous. Okay, okay, 54%. And I guess it's helpful to keep in mind here that in BC, indigenous people make up about 5.7% of the general population. So obviously, this is disproportionately high. And of course, in terms of scope, this is just one province, right?

This is just BC. And we know that this practice happened in other provinces as well. So obviously, there were a lot more women who were subject to them. Yes, correct. And in BC, birth alerts, again, we don't have complete data, but we do know that this had been a practice that had been in place for decades. So that data that I just mentioned was only for the last 18 months of birth alerts in BC. Okay, so let's talk about criteria then.

what would cause a person to be flagged for a birth alert? So there have been a range of reasons. It could be something like the mother had previously had children placed in care or apprehended. It could be that the mother uses drugs or is experiencing housing instability or homelessness. But also it could have been something like the mother was in foster care herself as a child. or that she had proactively sought the support of a social worker. And so that's how she got on their radar. And there's one example from Winnipeg in 2019.

There was video of this and it went viral and it made the news that year. Yeah, I remember it was a live stream, right? Yeah. So this pregnant mom, before she went to hospital, she had called social services to make arrangements for her baby to be placed in her aunt's care. And she only learned that she was the subject of a birth alert after she showed up at the hospital to give birth. And authorities were there to take her baby. I mean, there's some real irony here in this case where this woman reached out for help ahead of time, right?

And that seems to be what led to the birth alert. It's like she's trying to do everything she can to do the right thing here, even though she's in this vulnerable position. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we can certainly get into this more, too, but it affects. affects the way that you view health care and your trust in the system, in the health care system and in the child welfare system. Yeah. So was there a legal basis for this practice? The lawyers for these class members would argue, know. They have said that this is a violation of

privacy rights and it's also a violation of charter rights. So, you know, we've kind of touched on how this is obviously a very traumatic experience for these. individual women involved in this practice. But have we had a sense kind of on a higher level in terms of what the impact has been of all of these birth alerts? There has been some research, not a lot, but there has been some research on the use of birth alerts that have shown the short and long-term impacts to health and development. So there's that immediate disruption of skin-to-skin contact and the impact that that has on attachment. And attachment, of course, is in turn linked to emotional regulation and cognitive development and social functioning and all these very important

things later on. There's also the very apparent instability that it brings with foster care, especially if there are multiple placements for that child. There's the issue of disconnection from, you know, family and culture, and especially so when we're talking about indigenous children. And the trauma itself is obvious. And there's that, you know, real likelihood of perpetuating those cycles of intergenerational trauma. We'll be right back. I'm Robin Doolittle, and I'm a reporter and the deputy head of investigations at the Globe and Mail. And we need your help. Every year, seniors in Canada are defrauded out of millions of of dollars. And we want to look into this. We're starting an investigative project that's going to

examine the scams that target the elderly. If you or a loved one has been impacted by a grandparent scam or a fraud like this, the Globe and Mail would like to speak with you. You can reach us at elderfraud at globe and mail.com. That's elderfraud at globeandmail.com. All right. So, Andrea, you've given us a real sense of how this practice worked and what the impact of it has been. Now I'm just wondering how it all came to an end. How did it stop in BC? The final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was released in June 2019. And I just wanted to read one line from it. It says the use of birth alerts against indigenous mothers, including mothers who were in care themselves can be the sole basis for the apprehension of their newborn children.

Birth alerts are racist and discriminatory and are a gross violation of the rights of the child, the mother, and the community. And one of the calls to justice in the report was for governments and child welfare agencies to immediately end the practice. And so BC did so three months after the release of that report in September 2019, acknowledging the trauma that they had caused. I'm glad you brought up the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls report, because I'm wondering if it spoke at all to the impact that the birth alert system had in terms of the trust between indigenous communities and the health care system. There's another line that I wanted to read from that report. It says the apprehension of a child from their mother is a form

of violence against the child. It also represents the worst form of violence against the mother. Apprehension disrupts the familial and cultural connections that are present. in indigenous communities, and as such, denies the child the safety and security of both. And just on a related note, because you mentioned the trust in the health care system, experts have noted that, you know, the fear of being subject to a birth alert was enough to affect a woman's health. Because, for example, that Winnipeg example that we talked about before, this woman proactively reached out to social services knowing that she needed help and she ended up being penalized for it, that authorities were there, and she experienced this very

traumatizing ordeal. So the idea and the fear that you may be subject to this was enough to deter some women from accessing like prenatal care or for seeking treatment for substance use disorder, for example. So after the policy ended in BC, did we see any sort of government accountability happen? So it's important to note that the proposed settlement does not come with an admission of faults, and that's generally pretty common in actions like this. As part of this settlement, there is likely going to be some sort of a statement from the province when the settlement is approved. Again, that wouldn't be an admission of fault, but it would be some sort of an acknowledgement. And while there may not necessarily

be accountability, more accountability with respect to birth alerts specifically. This does sort of fit into the broader picture of this kind of reckoning on anti-indigenous racism in healthcare. So I was thinking specifically to the Canadian Medical Association, which in in 2024 publicly apologized for the role that it as an organization and the profession that it represents played in contributing to past and continuing harms to indigenous people in the health care system. Okay. So an apology there.

And then with the government dancing the fine legal line of unacknowledgment versus an apology. So this proposed settlement that we're talking about here in BC is said to be for $66 million. Andrea, can you put that in context for me? Is that a big amount of money? Is that a big deal here? Well, it's the first province to reach an agreement over the use of birth alerts. Other provinces are still very much engaged in legal action. And I spoke with a lawyer who is representing some of those plaintiffs in the other provinces.

And she called BC's response significant. Okay. That even though it doesn't come with an admission of fault, that there is an acknowledgement of the harm that it caused and the province issued a statement to us saying that this is the most responsible way to acknowledge this and to move on from it. Eligible class members would receive a minimum of $2,000. That's a very conservative estimate according to the lawyers. They just need to figure out how many people will end up being in the member class altogether. Indigenous class members will receive an additional amount. And there would also

be a collective fund to support families and communities who have been affected by birth alerts. So how many women would be eligible? The BC government identified just under 3,000 people who are potentially subject to a birth alert. The lawyers representing the class members believe that now that the action has been certified and they're in the notice period that they will probably hear from other people who self-identify. So we don't know the total number yet, but it could be three, four thousand, five thousand. So just before we move on from this specific lawsuit, I want to just kind of zoom in on exactly what the focus of it was.

So you were saying around the acknowledgement that the government is doing here, it is about the birth alert system itself, right? And so not the other elements that may or may not have happened to women in terms of like infants being apprehended and taken into state custody. Do you know why they focused the lawsuit just on this part of it and not all the downstream effects of the birth alert? I asked this question too because I was very curious when you know, you looked at the court documents and you hear from the plaintiffs and there seems to be such clear harms. Like why not broaden it? Why focus on, you know, the privacy piece of it?

And Michelle Siegel, so she's a lawyer at CFM Lawyers representing the class members. She said the illegality that we alleged was the breach of privacy. And what came from that breach, we say, were these other harms. So the purpose of the action is to link that illegality with these other harms. Interesting. Okay. I know you've spoken to the representative plaintiff in the BC class action suit. What did she say about how she feels about this settlement?

So her name is Adriana Zelensky. She was the unwitting subject of a birth alert when she delivered her fifth child at Vernon Jubilee Hospital. She wasn't told that there was a birth alert, but she immediately knew something was wrong. There was a security guard at her hospital and a social worker showed up shortly after birth, and it wasn't until years later that she figured out what was happening. She did not have her child apprehended, but it was a very traumatizing experience. She ultimately learned what birth alerts were and found out what had happened, and she lawyered up, and she got her medical records, and she found out that it had been inaccurate

misinformation that had been provided to the hospital, and that's what led to all of that happening. And so in the days after her birth, she had mentioned going to different offices and trying to get this all fixed. And like, this is a time when you should be resting. You just gave birth. You should be spending that time with her child. But it became such an ordeal based on the information that was shared in that birth alert.

She said that when she learned of what it was and she found out that it was a practice and it had a name and she wasn't alone, that there was a sense of comfort to know that this wasn't just something that happened to her. She said that it was almost like a sense of community now to know that there was a group of women who were going through the same thing as her. And she was very hopeful that this action would reach other women who may not have known like she didn't know before. And that they together can sort of unpack it to learn from it, to understand what happened and to begin healing from it. So that's what's happening in BC. Where are the other class action suits happening, Andrea? There are legal proceedings happening in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.

Okay, so there's a bunch of them. Let's run through each of them kind of quickly here. What's the status of the suit in Saskatchewan? In Saskatchewan, the government is appealing the admissibility of two landmark reports. And so one of those is the report that we mentioned, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. And the other is the 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The government is appealing the admissibility of those reports as evidence in the certification process.

Okay. The appeal was just heard a couple of weeks ago, and so they're waiting for a decision on that. Okay. What's happening in Manitoba now? The Matatoba government has taken the position that the class action there should be tossed because the plaintiff exceeded a two-year window to initiate legal action. So the plaintiff in that case is a woman named Carol Harper. She was subject to a birth alert and her child was taken into care in January 2019, but her lawsuit wasn't filed until March 22. And so they're arguing that

she exceeded this two-year statute of limitations. And so the whole thing should be tossed. Okay. And now how about in Ontario? In Ontario, a judge certified a class action against the province, but not against 49 children's aid societies on the basis of what is called the Raghuninin principle. What's that? You don't know. I don't know the Ravuninin principle, no. So I had a lawyer explain this to me.

So it's a decades-old common law requiring that in a multi-defendant class proceeding, like this, each defendant must have a corresponding plaintiff. So for Ontario, they would need 49 people who were personally harmed by each of these agencies who are willing to step forward. And so the lawyers are challenging that rule in the province. Huh. All right. And then lastly, there's a suit in Quebec. What's the status of that one? Quebec was the last province to ban birth alerts. A class action was filed in December, and it is now at the authorization stage. Okay.

All right, Andrea, before we end, I want to talk about kind of the bigger tension that's underlying the birth alert practice, which is that there are situations. I mean, we talked about the woman in Winnipeg where the live streaming of, you know, her birth alert happened, where pregnant women do need help, right? They need help in order to keep their child safe.

And some of them will proactively reach out for this help as we've talked about. I'm wondering what can be a solution here. What have experts said about what safe support looks like in those situations where a pregnant woman does need help? I think anyone who saw value in birth alerts or felt that this was a measure to protect the mother or the baby should be looking at ways to address this before it gets to that stage. You know, if the underlying issue that triggered the birth alert is housing instability or substance use, it's like, do we have programs that are for women who are dealing with housing instability or pregnant women who are dealing with substance use? You know, do we have prenatal outreach programs?

You know, are there community organizations that care for pregnant women who may be at risk? These things need to be in place so we don't get to that point where, a mother is about to deliver a baby and, you know, that's when authorities swoop in. Andrea, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, Maddie. That was Andrea Wu, a staff reporter for the globe based in Vancouver. That's it for today. I'm Madeline White, in for host, Cheryl Sutherland.

Our associate producer and intern is Cynthia Jimenez. Our producers are Rachel Levy McLaughlin, Mechal Stein and me. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks for listening.