Ontario couples should not have to go abroad to adopt when there are thousands of children in the province looking for a home, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak says.

A lack of coordination by the government and agencies, including Children’s Aid Societies, make it far too difficult for couples to easily find out who is up for adoption, Hudak told a news conference Friday where he presented his party’s discussion paper on children and youth.

“A lot of people want to adopt a kid . . . and they look overseas. They don’t often know about kids right here in the province of Ontario that would love to move in probably the next day,” he told reporters.

Hudak, along with the author of the paper, MPP Jane McKenna, said the CAS should be required to post the children in their care on the AdoptOntario website, noting that there were 8,500 children waiting for adoption and only 822 were adopted out, according to 2008 statistics.

“We are going to mandate them to participate and set goals to ensure that kids find permanent home. That should be a priority, not maintaining them in permanent care,” he said should the Tories form the next government.

“The current system is fragmented . . . there is no one place for people to look to find all these wonderful children that need to be adopted, Right now, I think there is about 2 per cent that are on (the AdoptOntario website),” McKenna said.

McKenna said the current system is counter-productive because the CAS is funded based on the number of children in their care, “so there is no incentive for them to have a child leave them because that’s how they get paid.”

Hudak said the province should provide subsidies to help defray that cost of adopting children with special needs, be it mental health issues, behavioural challenges, and physical disabilities.

“It is estimated that the cost to care for these kids is about $32,000 a year through a Children’s Aid Society and we are recommending anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 to the parents to help them adopt these kids and give them a permanent loving home,” he said.

Since June 15, the McGuinty government has provided adoptive parents with net family incomes below $85,000 a monthly payment of $950 per child — or $11,400 annually. That is about 60 per cent of the average cost Children’s Aid Societies pay foster parents in Ontario.

Children's Minister Laurel Broten said since 2003, “we have made improvements to Ontario’s child protection system so that fewer kids are coming into care and more kids are being placed in permanent homes.”

She said the government also introduced the Building Families and Supporting Youth to Be Successful Act to make it easier for prospective parents to adopt a child, provide permanent homes for more Crown wards and better prepare youth for adulthood.

“The PCs call their ideas a ‘fresh start,’ but it’s clear it will actually mean an abrupt end to the tremendous gains we have made for Ontario children and youth,” she stated in an email.

The Progressive Conservative paper also recommends getting rid of the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, saying much of the decision making already falls to other ministry, such as health.

The discussion paper also called for closing the gap in mental health service and an expert panel on infertility and adoption, among other things.