There are four general reasons that the system arguably does deserve to be “demolished” — unaccountability, secrecy, money and a lack of political will:

1. With virtually no checks and balances, case workers have “as much power as God,” in the words of one former social worker. And they use it according to their diverse subjective impulses;
2. Children in care have little voice. CAS actions often are shrouded in secrecy, and media investigations are chilled by CAS lawyers, who claim to be protecting the privacy rights of all involved. Children in foster and group care typically do not have adequate access to the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. Too often, “confidentiality” protects the powerful, not the vulnerable.
3. CASs are funded per capita. This creates a financial incentive for taking children into care. CASs receive extra funding for children diagnosed with conditions requiring medication — a fact that creates other unhealthy incentives.
4. CAS workers typically cannot be sued if they have acted in “good faith.” But bad faith is notoriously difficult to prove. Ombudsmen have the power to look at secret files, but in Ontario the ombudsman can only recommend changes, not actively intervene. Two recent attempts by NDP provincial legislators to pass a bill giving the ombudsman oversight teeth have failed: one voted down by Ontario’s then-majority Liberals, one dying in a prorogued parliament.
5. What is to be done?

 I will review a 2011 documentary film on this subject, made by a former foster parent. Powerful as God is a movie that Ontario family-service agencies would prefer you don’t see, but robust attempts to shut it down have failed.
Powerful as God can be found at blakout.ca. Featured in the film is a proposal for an alternative system of child protection that I find both sensible and viable. It is proposed by Canadians whose tragic history has rendered them all too familiar with the iniquities associated with what they regard as state-sanctioned child “kidnapping
The child protection industry in the province of Ontario suffers from many serious issues that adversely affect and often destroy the lives of countless children and families every year.
This accompanied with the apparent lack of any accountability or oversight whatsoever, creates massive problems that are ruining the lives of children and families.
Transparency is very important when dealing with the protection of children but it appears that almost every CAS in the province will refuse at all costs to show any transparency whatsoever.
This is where the issue of obtaining your internal file comes in. Every family or former CAS ward has the legal right to obtain a copy of their child protection and/or in care internal CAS file.
There are many reasons why someone would want these internal files ranging from a family that is fighting the CAS in court that could use this file to create a much more fair and just environment during legal proceedings, families and former crown wards that could to use the files for future litigation against a Society or it can be as simple as a former crown ward could benefit from being able to read this file to fill in missing gaps in their lives.
But for some reason as people find out, it is generally not a simple process to obtain your internal CAS files because even though you have the right to this information almost every CAS in the province will attempt to avoid providing you with your file at all costs.
Typically when someone requests a file from their local CAS, they often receive no response at all or they are provided a response that falsely implies that by law, they are not required or not allowed to provide this information.
Or on rare occasions, a Society may actually allow a family an hour or so to view their few thousand page file in the office but will not allow them to make copies or take pictures of anything within the file. They will also force a family to sign an agreement before the viewing that nothing in the file can be used against them in future litigation.
There is one case in Belleville Ontario for example, where a family had requested their child protection file from the Highland Shores CAS and they were met by such unreasonable opposition that the family had to resort to legal action that took over 6 months in court before it was eventually ordered that the Society provide the family with their file.
Then after the court had ordered that the Society provide the file, the Society failed to comply with the order for a number of months until the Ontario court justice threatened the Society with contempt of court so eventually after a total of 8 to 9 months in court and several thousand dollars in legal fees, the family received most but not all of their internal file.
Why does the CAS appear to be against providing someone with their file?
The answer seems to be that CAS's in the province of Ontario do not want to provide these files as it can expose their wrongdoings and unlawful actions. In the mentioned HSCAS case, once the family obtained their file it was found that the HSCAS had committed multiple criminal offences during the duration of the case. This includes the fact that the HSCAS had applied for a warrant to apprehend three children and when that warrant request was denied do to no verified protection concerns, the Society made a conscious decision to go against the order of the court and the law to apprehend the children anyway just hours after the warrant was denied.