The Urgent Fight for Finlay’s Law - Family Update

finlaysvoice
Nov 25
4 min read

We begin with deep gratitude to everyone who has supported Finlay’s Voice. Thank you for sharing our story, buying lawn signs, writing to your MPPs, donating, and speaking up. Every voice for Finlay brings us one step closer to meaningful change.

Progress so far

Launched Finlay’s Voice on social media and at www.finlaysvoice.com.
Reached national and local media; the story continues to gain traction.
Drafted Finlay’s Law with volunteer doctors and lawyers to protect children across Canada.
Met with Minister Jones (Ontario’s Minister of Health) to request enactment; she asked for willing partners but gave no commitment.
Halton Regional Council unanimously passed a motion supporting Finlay’s Law and requested funding for a pediatric emergency unit in Halton.
More than 29,500 people have signed the petition in support of Finlay’s Law.

Our reality while we fight

We do this while grieving Finlay, living with trauma, and trying to put one foot in front of the other. The last few months have been especially hard. Watching his friends move on to university, college, or work has been painful — that should have been Finlay.

On top of our grief, fighting for change is exhausting and demoralizing. Time and again we meet people in positions of power who offer sympathy and platitudes but no concrete help — no commitments, no resources, no timelines. That hollow reassurance compounds our pain and slows reform, yet despite this we remain committed to pushing for enforceable change so no other family has to endure what we have.

Complaint Status and Concerns

Back in November 2024 we filed complaints with the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) about the care Finlay received the night he was in the Emergency Department. The CPSO handled its process professionally and in a timely way. The CNO has not.

While our lawyer is acting on our behalf, you seem to have overlooked that we, the family, are the ones waiting—the parents who lost their son and the siblings who lost their brother. I had hoped our case would be handled compassionately and from a trauma‑informed perspective. Instead, we have experienced a dreadful wait, a lack of communication, and piecemeal disclosure of shocking findings. And yet we still wait for the final report. Your lack of insight into how this process would impact us has been deeply activating; hearing that nurses saw the deterioration of our boy but did nothing has been retraumatizing.

Excerpt of a formal letter from the van der Werken family to the College of Nurses of Ontario, dated Nov 14, 2025, summarizing concerns about pediatric care and complaint status.

The factual basis for systemic reform

The need for Finlay’s Law is underscored by findings revealed during our formal complaint process with the CNO. The committee’s report highlights a critical breakdown in patient‑safety oversight:

Lack of knowledge and skill: The committee found that a healthcare member “did a ‘good assessment’ and recognized that the oxygen saturation was lower,” but “did not appreciate the severity” and “may have failed to recognize the significance of the decrease in oxygen saturations or decline in respiratory status.” The committee expressed concern that the member lacked the necessary “knowledge, skill and judgment” to assess the client and escalate the situation appropriately.
High risk with no action: The committee concluded the member’s actions posed a “high risk of patient harm.” Despite identifying this profound failure, the committee’s outcome was that “no action” would be taken in one complaint and only written advice was issued in another regarding the code of conduct and documentation standards.

For our family, these findings are devastating and show a system that allowed critical deficiencies to persist — deficiencies that contributed to a child’s death, our child — without mandatory corrective action.

At the time of this update, the CNO’s final report remains outstanding, more than a year after we submitted our complaints.

This is not a witch-hunt against individual clinicians. Our aim is to highlight the devastating state of emergency pediatric care and the systemic failures that allow these problems to recur. These issues are not confined to a single hospital; they reflect broader gaps in training, escalation protocols, resourcing, and accountability across the system that must be addressed.

Demanding accountability over platitudes

We understand the healthcare system faces many pressures, but our focus is clear: reduce pediatric wait times and ensure enforceable standards that protect children.

What Finlay’s Law seeks: enforceable protocols and clear boundaries so that standards are not optional. If preventable deaths are occurring, accountability must follow — through laws, regulations, and enforceable protocols that hospital staff and administrators must meet.

What we are asking government to do: provincial and federal leaders must act, not offer platitudes. If a preventable situation can be fixed and nothing is done, the government shares responsibility for inaction. We are asking them to take charge and implement concrete, enforceable changes.

Our specific demands

Enforce existing standards with clear escalation protocols for pediatric patients and mandatory training and competency checks for staff working in emergency and pediatric settings.
Create accountability mechanisms so failures that pose high risk of patient harm trigger timely, transparent corrective action.
Fund pediatric emergency capacity including dedicated pediatric emergency units or pediatric‑specific resources in hospitals where gaps exist.
Mandate timely complaint resolution by regulatory colleges with transparent timelines and public reporting on outcomes when patient safety is at stake.

How you can help

While we continue to grieve, our advocacy remains resolute. Please help amplify our voice so hospital administrators and government officials feel the pressure to act:

Sign the petition: https://c.org/rFxkpLTH5T
Share this update on social media and with your networks.
Write to your MPPs asking them to support Finlay’s Law and demand pediatric emergency capacity and enforceable standards. (draft letter here
Donate to support our advocacy and legal work at https://gofund.me/053b0bcb6

We will keep pushing for the legal and protocol changes needed to protect children in emergency care. Thank you for standing with us — your support matters more than words can say.