Family law expert to lead second Motherisk probe
Retired judge will head commission for cases affected by Sick Kids laboratory
Retired judge Judith C. Beaman will lead an independent commission probing individual cases involving Motherisk lab results.
Justice Susan Lang, the retired Court of Appeal judge who led the first independent review of Motherisk, consulted the Ministry of the Attorney General on Justice Beaman’s selection, according to a ministry spokesperson.
“We believe we have the best person for the job,” Brendan Crawley wrote in an email.
Called to the bar in 1977, Beaman specialized in child and family protection law, spending her early career with what is now known as the Office of the Children’s Lawyer.
Beaman worked as a sole practitioner and partner, later joining the Sta- tus of Women Canada Directorate as a policy analyst before she was appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice in 1998, where she presided over criminal and family courts.
She served as regional senior justice for eastern Ontario in 2008 and retired in 2014.
In the wake of a damning review released last Thursday, the province established a 1-800 number to connect individuals affected by Motherisk lab results with support.
Lang’s review of hair testing done between 2005 and 2015 at the nowshuttered lab found the drug and alcohol hair-testing process used by the Hospital for Sick Children lab to be “inadequate and unreliable.”
It found the lab did not meet in- ternationally recognized forensic standards, and that Sick Kids had not provided “meaningful oversight.”
In addition to thousands of child welfare proceedings, it found six criminal cases that led to convictions where hair tests were used.
The mandate and resources of Beaman’s commission will be established “over the coming weeks,” according to a statement from Ontario Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur.
“We are committed to moving as quickly as possible to help those who may have been impacted by the laboratory’s flawed testing practices,” Meilleur said. The independent review was sparked by a Star investigation into Motherisk’s hair-testing practices.
The investigation showed that prior to 2010, Motherisk was testing hair using a methodology described by experts as falling short of the “gold-standard test.”