Suing the Wrong People

I can't imagine a worse nightmare for a parent than to have a child die. There is absolutely nothing that one can do to prepare for such a tragedy. I suspect that in spite of hundreds of people offering their condolences and whatever support they can - at the end of each day for the foreseeable future, there will be a hole in the parents' lives. A hole that cannot be filled. Parents who have lost a child through an accident or because someone did not do something - must also always carry an additional question in their hearts - what could they have/should they have done differently? It is understandable therefore when some parents express their crushing grief through angrily blaming someone else.

Lord knows in the case of Eva Ravikovich, a two year old who was injured and then died while under the care of an unlicensed day care facility somewhere north of Toronto (Globe and Mail), there are a lot of places to lay blame. It is alleged that the home did not follow critical Ministry of Education guidelines including there being too many children being cared for, perhaps improper  preparation and storing of food and insufficient supervision. The Ministry itself appears to at the very least, not to have followed through with an investigation after some of the complaints were made.

The family are suing the owners/operators and the Ministry for 3.5 million dollars.  I would guess that it is likely that the operators of the unlicensed day care should have done some things better - that they, like all business took some short cuts to, if not make money, to at least to break even. I am sure that there are a number of unlicensed day care facilities in all parts of the province who because of the high demand for day care - have one or two children over the allowable limit. Some operators may do it because they want to make more money, while perhaps some do it because the parents ask them to take just one more child in. As long as the province allows unlicensed day care facilities to operate with minimal supervision, then there will be those who bend the rules and those who really don't know what they are doing.

I have absolutely no doubt that the Ministry failed to respond quickly enough. I also have no doubt that if they had twice as many staff to respond to complaints they would catch at least the most flagrant violators. I further suspect that if there were some reasonable alternatives for parents and children, they would close more unlicensed day care facilities down. But we are not going to agree to more civil servants being hired and everyone can imagine the howls from suburbia and the downtown core if unlicensed day care facilities were closed down because of violations of the Act.

From a very tight focus, the operators and the Ministry must share part of the blame, but we as a larger society must also accept some of the culpability. Our culture, while it pays lip service to the idea that family is everything, does nothing to ensure that one parent can stay at home with their child during, at least, the early developmental years and for the family's quality of life to be maintained. We all quite frequently ramble on about the importance of children and how they are the future - but we are not prepared to ensure that that if parents need to work, that there is affordable and accessible high quality and licensed (inspected) day care. And finally we all seem to accept that the new normal for families is that both parents work. That they need to do so because of the high cost of housing, food, transportation and life in general.  We are told that for many, if not most couples, there is no choice.

There is no choice because we chose not make it. My heart goes out to Eva Ravikovich's family. But I if we truly wanted to insure that something like this would never happen again - we all need to take responsibility. Suing a private person and the Ministry won't change a damn thing.


The family should sue me and everyone else (including themselves) - we all let it happen.