A troubling gap in Ontario law
For weeks this summer, a lead instructor at a hockey camp in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, continued working directly with children — despite having recently pleaded guilty to charges of assaulting kids. According to CBC News, the camp was under no legal obligation to remove him, screen him, or even disclose his record, because Ontario simply has no legislation requiring summer camps to vet staff who work with children.
The case has put a spotlight on a regulatory blind spot that many parents likely assume doesn't exist. While schools, licensed daycares, and many youth sports organizations in Ontario require criminal background checks and vulnerable sector screening for anyone working with kids, summer camps fall outside that framework. There's no provincial standard mandating background checks, no requirement to act on pending or resolved criminal charges, and no central body enforcing staff screening across the hundreds of day and overnight camps that operate in the province each summer.
How this happens
Unlicensed and loosely regulated sectors like summer camps often rely on individual operators to set their own hiring standards. Some camps voluntarily require background checks or references; others don't. Without a legal floor set by the province, screening becomes optional rather than mandatory — meaning an instructor's history, even one involving a guilty plea for assaulting children, may never surface to the families paying to send their kids there.
This isn't necessarily about bad actors deliberately hiding information. It's about a system with no consistent rules at all. A camp could genuinely be unaware of an employee's legal history if it never asked, and there's currently nothing compelling it to ask.
Why this matters across Ontario
This story isn't confined to one camp in Kawartha Lakes — it reflects a provincewide policy gap. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of Ontario families, including many across the Ottawa area, send their kids to day camps, sports camps, and overnight programs, generally trusting that basic safety screening is already standard practice. This case makes clear that assumption doesn't hold up everywhere.
Child safety advocates have long pushed for provincial standards specific to camps, arguing that patchwork, camp-by-camp policies leave dangerous gaps. Legislation requiring standardized screening — similar to what's already mandated for teachers, licensed child care workers, and many youth sport organizations — could close the loophole that allowed this Kawartha Lakes instructor to keep working.
What Ontario parents can do now
Until provincial rules change, the responsibility largely falls on parents to ask direct questions before enrolling kids in any camp: Does the camp conduct criminal background checks on staff? Are references verified? Is there a clear reporting and removal policy if concerns arise? Camps that can't answer these questions clearly may be worth reconsidering.
Ontario's Ministry of Education and Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services oversee various aspects of child care and youth programming, but as this case shows, summer camps currently sit in a regulatory gray zone that leaves screening entirely up to individual operators.
Source: CBC News
