Bill S-212 is a start, but Black children in Canada need more than a plan
Parliamentarians recently passed Bill S-212, the National Strategy for Children and Youth Act, through the Senate, and it is now before the House of Commons. The bill calls on the federal government to develop a comprehensive national strategy for children and youth, including setting measurable goals, establishing accountability mechanisms, and reporting regularly to Parliament.
This is a welcome development. Yet, it comes against a troubling backdrop: Canada now ranks 19th out of 36 wealthy countries on UNICEF's child and youth well-being index, having fallen behind many peer nations. The reasons for this decline are not uniform. Inequities are driving Canada's poor standing. Among the groups most profoundly affected—as documented across multiple United Nations reports—are Black children and youth in Canada.
Our research team holds the largest federal grant focused on Black child and youth well-being in Canada. Through a $2.5-million Social Sciences and Humanities Resarch Council partnership grant, Transforming the Lives of Black Children and Youth in Canada, we are examining well-being across five interconnected systems: education, health, justice, child welfare, and immigration and settlement. We have now completed a scoping review of more than 250 Canadian studies on Black children and youth. The findings are sobering.
Black youth are disproportionately represented in the child welfare and justice systems. In health, a wide range of conditions have been documented, including sickle cell disease, preterm birth, HIV, pediatric lupus, and mental health disorders such as depression and PTSD. Racism was identified as a prominent social determinant underlying these health conditions and the barriers Black children face in accessing care. In education, academic streaming, school discipline disparities, and socio-economic exclusion converge to narrow opportunities for Black students. In the justice system, Black youth's contact with criminal justice is not an isolated phenomenon; it is an extension of daily interactions across child welfare, education, and health-care systems, all shaped by processes of racial injustice.
These findings point to a clear conclusion: to meaningfully improve outcomes for Black children and youth, Canada must address the structural and political determinants of health, with anti-Black racism at the centre. Anti-Black racism in schools contributes directly to educational gaps, mental health challenges, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chronic underfunding of sickle cell disease, which disproportionately affects people of African descent, reflects how systemic neglect operates in health policy. Barriers to primary care access, inadequate culturally responsive services, and the over-surveillance of Black families in child welfare compound these harms across the life course. Despite these adversities, research also consistently shows that Black children and youth demonstrate remarkable resilience; yet their strengths are routinely overlooked in favour of deficit-based narratives. Policy must move beyond problem-framing, and invest in what works.
Our team has also completed the largest national survey of Black children and youth in Canada. Preliminary findings confirm the pervasiveness of anti-Black racism across daily life and institutions. They point clearly to the need to address disparities in access to primary care, to support and promote mentorship of Black children and youth, and to position Black communities not as passive recipients of services but as capable, knowledgeable actors in their own health and well-being.
This brings us back to Bill S-212. The bill is a genuine step forward. It creates a framework, demands accountability, and signals political will. But a framework without dedicated funding is a plan without power.
The costs of inaction are steep: poor health outcomes, over-incarceration, educational failure, and lost human potential carry enormous long-term costs to society. Investment in upstream strategies now will generate real savings and, more importantly, better lives. Critically, any national strategy must explicitly name Black children; not subsume them into generic "equity-deserving" language; and must fund and position Black community organizations and leaders as central agents of change. The evidence is there. The community is ready. Parliament must now match its stated commitment with the resources to make it real.
Dr. Bukola Salami is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black and Racialized Peoples' Health at the University of Calgary, and leads the Transforming the Lives of Black Children and Youth in Canada research program.
Dr. Barbara Hamilton-Hinch is a professor in the School of Health and Human Performance in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University, and the assistant vice-provost of equity and inclusion. Her research examines structural, systemic, and institutional racism for populations that have been marginalized, particularly people of African descent.
The Hill Times