Bulletin: Motherisk: Major Revelations: CBC News reports that as many as 2,300 people in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had their hair tested for drugs and alcohol at the discredited Hospital for Sick Children Motherisk lab, which was shut down after flawed tests had been found - and that Nova Scotia continues to order tests from an Ontario-based lab called Dynacare. "New Brunswick's child and youth advocate wants the New Brunswick government to go back and check its records. (Norman) Bossé wants to be assured that children weren't taken away from their parents solely because of unreliable tests. Without that assurance, he's left thinking about the worst-case scenario: a child, ripped from his or her parents, all because of a false positive drug test."

"As many as 2,300 people in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had their hair tested for drugs and alcohol at a discredited Toronto lab, a CBC News investigation has found. Hundreds of those people produced at least one positive test result between 1997 and 2015, findings the lab now admits may have been "inaccurate." Many of the test results from the Motherisk lab at The Hospital for Sick Children were used as evidence in child protection cases, leaving critics across the country worried some children may have been taken from their families unnecessarily. Norman Bossé, New Brunswick's child and youth advocate, said the damage in such a case could be difficult to repair.

"Government would have to look at the parents and say, 'OK, we messed up here. We don't know how to fix it,'" Bossé said. Did you have your hair tested for drugs or alcohol between 1997 and 2015? "Perhaps there's a solution. Perhaps you go back to the adoptive parents and they come to an agreement. I don't know. That is the danger of using this type of evidence that's not reliable. Despite that, CBC News has learned the two Maritime provinces are doing little to review those cases to see if children were unfairly removed from their families. And Nova Scotia continues to use hair-based drug testing from other labs, despite Ontario and now New Brunswick questioning the science and discontinuing its testing.........Officials with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick can't say how hundreds of unreliable test results may have been used in their provinces because they are not doing a similar review. Both provinces say they will only take a second look at closed cases if they receive a request from a person who was tested or their lawyer. No one from either provincial government was available for an interview about Motherisk. Nova Scotia has received one request to look at an individual case. Heather Fairbairn, a spokeswoman with the Department of Community Services, said it didn't result in a change to the original decision. In New Brunswick, all open child welfare cases are subject to an automatic review, said Dave MacLean, a spokesman with the Department of Social Development. He couldn't say how many open cases might have used Motherisk testing.  A negative or positive drug test has never been the sole deciding factor to take a child from a parent, officials from both provinces say. "A number of other factors inform such decisions," MacLean said. New Brunswick's child and youth advocate wants the New Brunswick government to go back and check its records. Bossé wants to be assured that children weren't taken away from their parents solely because of unreliable tests. Without that assurance, he's left thinking about the worst-case scenario: a child, ripped from his or her parents, all because of a false positive drug test......... But agencies in Nova Scotia continue to order tests from an Ontario-based lab called Dynacare, a spokeswoman at the company confirmed. The lab says its testing is "robust," providing "high-quality analytical toxicology service for analysis of drugs-of-abuse in hair. Dynacare was also doing testing for New Brunswick until March 1, when the province reversed its position on hair testing.Halifax-based lawyer Kymberly Franklin has called for a review of child protection cases where hair samples were tested in the Motherisk lab. (CBC) MacLean said the decision was prompted by "concerns about the overall reliability of this type of testing." It's a decision New Brunswick's child and youth advocate supports. "It was going to come to this point anyway," Bossé said. "Judges are going to start rejecting that type of evidence as not being reliable." He isn't the only one who has called for a review of Motherisk cases. Last year, Halifax-based lawyer Kymberly Franklin called for the Nova Scotia government to review dozens of open child protection cases that used hair testing from Motherisk. "It's a very serious issue to take a child away from its family, and it's permanent," Franklin told CBC in 2015."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-nova-scotia-hair-testing-1.3475869?cmp=rss