Ottawa hospital got hundreds of alerts used to seize newborns despite order to stop

Despite the fact that Ontario put a stop to birth alerts in 2020, Quebec child welfare agencies continued to send hundreds of the controversial notifications — which can be used to threaten to or actually seize newborns from their mothers — to Ottawa's largest hospital.

According to internal hospital data obtained by CBC News, The Ottawa Hospital received 298 birth alerts from October 2020 onward. That was when the province ended the practice, saying the alerts disproportionately affect Indigenous and other racialized mothers.

All the alerts Quebec issued after 2020 "were not acted upon," the hospital said.

But Cora McGuire-Cyrette, executive director of the Ontario Native Women's Association, said it's "disheartening to see these numbers."

And an Ottawa doula told CBC that clients told her they'd experienced birth alerts at the hospital as recently as this year.

Birth alerts are notifications issued by child welfare agencies to hospitals that target unborn children of pregnant people who they deem "high-risk." After they're issued, health-care providers are required to alert welfare authorities when the person comes to seek medical care or deliver their baby.

The alerts can lead to newborns being taken from their parents for days, months or even years. Critics have called them unconstitutional and illegal.

The Ontario government directed children's aid societies to stop sending birth alerts to hospitals by Oct. 15, 2020. Years later, on April 14, 2023, the Quebec government announced it was ending birth alerts, becoming the last province in Canada to do so. 

CBC submitted a freedom of information request to all Ottawa hospitals asking for details on birth alerts they'd received from 2010 to 2022.

Queensway Carleton, Montfort, Bruyère and CHEO said they kept no records on birth alerts.

The Ottawa Hospital was the only institution that kept track of them, and shared the number of alerts they received between 2017 and 2022.

Child welfare agencies issued 1,206 birth alerts to the hospital between 2017 and 2022.

In the last three years, from 2020 to 2022, the hospital received 487 — including 71 last year.

August 2022 was the only month in the past six years that the hospital recorded zero birth alerts. It got 36 of them in October 2018 — the highest number of alerts for any month in the data CBC received.