Birth Alerts: The $50-Million Class Action Against Quebec’s Youth Protection Directors Moves Forward

She gave birth, then was told she would leave without her baby. In her name, a class action now targets Quebec’s twenty youth protection directors and the government, over a practice — « birth alerts » — that the state itself acknowledged was discriminatory and beyond the directors’ jurisdiction before abolishing it. A little over three months after the filing, a judge was assigned to manage the case.

Some cases come down to a single image. This one has it: a woman who has just given birth, being told she will leave the hospital without her child. The Court refers to her only by her initials, N. S., to protect her identity. It is in her name that a class action was filed on December 5, 2025, with the Superior Court of Quebec — and it casts a wide net.

On the defendants’ bench: Quebec’s twenty youth protection directors, those of the major regions as well as those serving northern and Indigenous communities, and the Attorney General of Quebec, who represents the government. What they are accused of: having exploited, for years and without any right to do so, a system of « birth alerts. »

The case, step by step

Dec. 5, 2025

Filing of the application for authorization with the Superior Court, district of Montreal.

Dec. 19, 2025

The Attorney General of Quebec files its Response: it requests the exhibits and agrees to cooperate on case management.

Mar. 16, 2026

By an order signed by the Honourable Martin F. Sheehan, the Court designates the Honourable Catherine Martel to manage the application for authorization and to rule on it.

Jul. 19, 2026

As of publication, the case remains at the authorization stage; no hearing has yet been publicly scheduled.

Upcoming

Hearing on authorization. If the action is authorized, a notice to members is requested in La Presse+, Le Soleil and The Gazette, with a 30-day opt-out period.

What the system wasAn alert issued before birth even happened

The mechanism operated upstream of delivery. A social worker, a mother’s past history with youth protection — sometimes when she herself was a minor —, an open file for another of her children, or simply a concerned person: any of these channels could trigger an alert. Youth protection would then send a warning to the hospitals and birthing centres where the woman was likely to give birth, with instructions to flag her as soon as she arrived.

These notices contained nothing trivial. According to the application, they gathered the woman’s name and address, her age, the existence of other dependent children, the expected date of delivery, sometimes the identity of the father, and the nature of the concerns. Some alerts went further: monitoring the parents, planning a supervised hospital discharge, even apprehending the newborn as soon as it was born. All of this circulated without the consent of the person concerned, and often without her knowledge. The application even cites a CBC News report from May 2023: Quebec reportedly sent hundreds of notices to an Ottawa hospital, even though Ontario had already banned the practice.

The central argumentThe directors had no jurisdiction

The applicant’s legal reasoning turns first on a question of power, and it is devastatingly simple.

On top of this lack of jurisdiction come two further grievances. First, the use and disclosure of personal and confidential information, done — according to the application — without consent and without legal authorization, in violation of the Youth Protection Act, the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information, and the Act respecting health and social services information. Second, an infringement of fundamental rights: liberty, security and integrity (s. 7 of the Canadian Charter, s. 1 of the Quebec Charter), equality (s. 15 Canadian, s. 10 Quebec, against a backdrop of discrimination based on race, ethnic origin and social condition), privacy and dignity (ss. 4 and 5 of the Quebec Charter).

N. S.’s exampleFrom the Olo program line to the hospital room

N. S. was herself followed by youth protection until around the age of 17. In 2022, now an adult, she learns she is pregnant. She enrolls in the Olo program — food assistance for low-income pregnant people — and, in doing so, comes into contact with a social worker.

On the day of her delivery, hospital staff notify youth protection that she is in labour. A few minutes later, a caseworker calls back and dictates the steps to follow after the birth. Once the child is born, she is told the baby will be placed in foster care and that she will have to leave the hospital without him. She states that she never consented to an alert being issued, nor to her information being shared.

What N. S. describes — distress, shame, loss of self-esteem, harm to the bond with the newborn, mistrust of the health system — the application attributes to all of the women affected, who could number in the thousands.

The part that stingsA practice deemed discriminatory… before being abolished

The timeline is the heaviest element of the case. As early as 2019, the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls recommended immediately ending the targeting and removal of newborns at birth, a practice that disproportionately affected Indigenous families. Between 2019 and 2021, every other Canadian province abandoned it.

Quebec was the last. It was only in 2023 that the Ministry of Health and Social Services banned the practice, effective March 13, 2023, confirmed by a press release dated April 14, 2023, and replaced it with a plan of preventive and intensive prenatal services. Yet, in its own directive, the ministry acknowledged that the practice had been deemed discriminatory and that « the DYP do not, legally, have the legitimacy to intervene » in this way. It is on this admission that the $50-million claim for punitive damages rests: the application infers from it that the state knew the system was unlawful and let it continue.

Where the case standsQuebec responds, and a judge takes the case

The government did not wait long. On December 19, 2025, two weeks after the filing, the Attorney General of Quebec — who is handling the defence of all the parties targeted, the twenty directors as well as the government — filed its Response. In it, it requests the exhibits supporting the application and indicates that it will cooperate with the court to establish case-management arrangements. The defence is led by M^es Alexandra Hodder, Corinne Baillargeon and Ariane Gagnon (Bernard, Roy — Justice-Québec).

Then, on March 16, 2026, the Superior Court took a concrete step: by a designation order signed by the Honourable Martin F. Sheehan (himself mandated for this purpose by Chief Justice Marie-Anne Paquette), the Honourable Catherine Martel was put in charge of the entire procedure relating to the application for authorization, and of ruling on it. In practical terms, a judge will now steer the case up to the pivotal decision: the one that will determine whether the class action can actually go forward.

What to keep in mind

Let us be clear: nothing has been adjudicated yet. The case is at the authorization stage, the preliminary step at which a judge decides only whether the action may proceed. The Court does not rule on the merits and takes no position on whether the allegations are true. The defendants have not filed a defence on the merits, and the facts put forward remain, for now, allegations. What remains is the question that goes beyond N. S.’s case: how could a mechanism that the state ultimately deemed discriminatory, and beyond the directors’ jurisdiction, have operated for so long — and how many families still carry its marks.

Before the courts, this case pits thousands of families against the machinery of the state. That is precisely what EnDroit.ca exists to shed light on: making legible a system that most people only discover at the worst possible moment. We will follow what comes next.