At least four of these provinces continued to rely on the tests after 2014, when the Star first sounded the alarm on the lab after its results were challenged in an Ontario appeal court. Even after the Ontario government released a report in December 2015 that determined Motherisk’s evidence was “inadequate and unreliable” for use in court, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia persisted in using hair testing to help decide whether children should be permanently removed from their parents’ homes.

Journalists from the Star and CBC’s The Current and The Fifth Estate interviewed families, reviewed more than 40 child protection cases that relied on Motherisk’s testing, and surveyed provincial governments about their responses to Motherisk’s failings. So far, only one province, Ontario, is providing counselling and legal support to affected families. None are offering financial compensation.

For more than two decades, in thousands of cases across Canada, Motherisk's flawed drug and alcohol testing influenced decisions about whether to remove children from their families. Parents who've lost children speak out about the heartbreaking aftermath and experts weigh in on how it all went wrong.

“Losing your child is the capital punishment of child protection law,” said retired judge Susan Lang, who wrote the government-commissioned report on Motherisk. “You need to have these test results done right.”

In a recent interview, she called the fallout “a tragedy.”

“I suppose the best that any of our families can hope for is ongoing contact between parent and child,” she said. “I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all happen, but I suspect that we cannot do that.”

Dr. Gideon Koren, the founder and former director of Motherisk who retired from Sick Kids during Lang’s review in 2015, still speaks at medical conferences around the world. This month, he was a panellist in Windsor, England. A crowd of 50 listened as Koren, who now works in Israel, spoke about hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness, in a room overlooking the Royal Windsor Racecourse favoured by the Queen.

Koren’s smile faded when he was approached by a reporter who asked about the problems at Motherisk.

“I will not answer. Under legal instructions, I cannot talk about that,” he said, before exiting down a back stairwell.

Fifth Estate co-host Mark Kelley confronts Dr. Gideon Koren, the founder and former director of Motherisk, at a medical conference in Windsor, England, this month.

The mother in B.C. wants answers.

The woman, who is identified as Lisa, a pseudonym, to protect the identity of her children, said “I lost my whole life over those tests.”

This B.C. mother the Star is calling Lisa believes Motherisk’s hair tests were the linchpin in the decision to place her children in permanent care. Darryl Dyck for the Toronto Star

Her two daughters were placed in permanent care 11 years ago due in part to Motherisk testing, which showed she had recently used methamphetamine, a finding she denied. Although there were other factors in her case, including allegations of neglect, she believes the hair testing was the linchpin.

“I didn’t even have an identity outside of being a mother,” she said. “I didn’t know who I was or where I was going when they took my kids away from me. I tried to commit suicide more than once.

“I felt I was this horrible person. I wasn’t capable of having children or being around people. I just didn’t think I was human.”

The Motherisk scandal emerged in late 2014, after an expert witness challenged the reliability of the lab’s evidence in the case of a Toronto mom convicted in 2009 of repeatedly feeding her toddler cocaine, leading up to a near-fatal overdose. The criticisms of Motherisk led the Ontario Court of Appeal to toss Tamara Broomfield’s cocaine-related convictions. But it wasn’t until spring 2015, after Sick Kids had shuttered the lab during Lang’s review, that provincial governments addressed the use of hair-strand testing. The responses varied widely.

That April, Ontario instructed child welfare agencies to stop relying on the testing in “ongoing and future” child protection cases. A month later, B.C., where media has reported that 8,000 newborns and adults underwent Motherisk testing between 1997 and 2015, imposed a moratorium on hair testing for child protection cases.

Almost a full year later, in March 2016, New Brunswick issued a similar order; there, according to information released by Sick Kids, between 1,100 and 1,400 individuals had their hair tested by the Motherisk lab. Nova Scotia, where an estimated 750 to 900 individuals were tested, stopped relying on hair testing in April 2016, four months after Lang’s final report was released.

That was too late for a Nova Scotia mother and father who were in the final throes of a battle to keep their family together.

The parents, who we are calling Fred and Julie, had a history with child protection, according to court rulings. The primary concerns were their volatile relationship and allegations of substance abuse, which were confirmed, in part, by Motherisk testing.

A Nova Scotia couple the Star is calling Fred and Julie, to protect their children’s identities, say they were hurt by Motherisk hair tests, including testing that purported to show active cocaine use by the dad. Their son was eventually adopted. Vaughan Merchant/Toronto Star photo illustration

Two of their children — a girl, 3, and a boy, 7 months — had been living with their paternal grandmother when the kids were apprehended in July 2013. A child protection worker alleged Fred had violated a court order prohibiting him from being in the house at night and that there was a “physical altercation” between Julie and the grandmother.

The ministry moved for permanent care in separate trials. The parents lost the first trial, concerning their son, in June 2014. Fred, who was seeking sole custody, had recently produced a clean Motherisk test. But the judge noted that previous Motherisk testing showed “active, intensive and frequent” cocaine use, which reflected the “lack of honesty” of Fred, who characterized his past use as recreational.

By the time their daughter’s case got to court in December 2014, Lang’s review of Motherisk was underway. This time, Fred, again seeking sole custody, presented hair tests from a forensically accredited lab in the U.S., which came back negative for cocaine. He got his daughter back.

In that May 2015 ruling, the judge said she assigned “no weight” to the news that Ontario had stopped relying on Motherisk testing. Instead, based on the test from the independent lab and other evidence about the father’s lifestyle, she concluded he had not used cocaine since September 2013, despite several positive Motherisk tests showing very low concentrations of the drug during this period.