A Canadian father is preparing to take child safety officials to court after his four children – who range in age from seven to 11 – were ordered to stop riding the city bus by themselves, in a case that has sparked a nationwide debate on the expectations around parental supervision.

For much of the past two years, Adrian Crook – a single father of five who lives in downtown Vancouver – has been teaching his four oldest children how to make the 13km journey to their school on public transportation. Earlier this year, equipped with GPS-tracked cellphones, the children started making the 45-minute trek on their own.

Their tepid foray into independence came to a halt weeks later. An anonymous complainant contacted the province’s ministry of children and family development, voicing concern after spotting the children alone on public transit.

A weeks-long investigation ensued – during which Crook’s children were interviewed separately by the ministry and barred from taking the bus without an adult – and which ended with the ministry telling Crook that children under the age of 10 years old could not be left unsupervised in the community, at home or on transit, for any amount of time.

The decision meant public transportation without an adult was now off limits for most of his children, as were the little freedoms they had long taken for granted, such as dashing across the street to the convenience store in front of their condo building.

“It’s a disappointment,” said Crook. “You feel like part of your way of life is being threatened. There are a whole lot of reasons behind why I chose to do this – it’s not just some kneejerk, I’m just being lazy, can’t be bothered to get my kids to school kind of thing. The number one thing is to make my kids into independent, confident humans who can navigate their own way in the city.”

Adrian Crook raised more than C$40,000 to fight the ministry’s order. Photograph: Adrian Crook

Crook now lives in constant worry that any violation of the rules could land him again in the ministry’s crosshairs and risk his joint custody of his children. “Not having the flexibility to leave any of them alone for any amount of time is a really stressful thing.”

Simple tasks such as taking out the garbage – a short trek about 30 floors down to the building’s underground level – have become a headache. “I try to convince my 11-year-old to do as much as possible, because he’s the only one who’s legally allowed to leave the house on his own, basically,” he said.

In a statement to the Guardian, the ministry said it was “legislatively obligated” to assess all child protection reports received. “Deciding whether and where it’s appropriate to leave a child on his or her own isn’t just about age. It’s about the particular circumstances in place and – just as crucially – a child’s level of maturity, comfort and sense of safety with the arrangement,” said Allison Bond, the deputy minister of children and family development for British Columbia.

“And when a young person has been entrusted with not only his or her own safety but also that of a younger child or children, then that is a scenario which must be considered.”

Earlier this month, Crook wrote a post about the ministry’s decision on his blog and launched a crowdfunding campaign to help him challenge the order in court.

Donations poured in – raising more than C$40,000 ($32,000) in the span of a few weeks – and emails flooded into Crook’s inbox, many of them from parents with their own stories of being scolded by the ministry over decisions such as allowing their children to walk a few blocks to school.



His post was soon picked up by media across Canada, prompting a cross-country conversation as to whether the government should play a role in enforcing parental supervision. In a letter to Crook, the ministry pointed to the three Canadian provinces that have established a legal minimum age at which children can be left alone: in Manitoba and New Brunswick it is 12 years old, while in Ontario the age is set at 16 years.

In the coming days, Crook will sit down with one of the nearly 20 lawyers who contacted him in recent weeks, to find a way to contest the ministry’s involvement in deciding how he should raise his children. “There shouldn’t be a role for the ministry in what is entirely a parenting decision.”

He pointed to how perspectives on parenting had changed in the past generation. “I was using power tools in the basement in elementary school when my parents were home and they were fully aware of that,” he said with a laugh. “Parenting was something like a combination of extreme responsibility and just neglect, quite frankly.”

He worried that the pendulum had now swung to the other extreme – a shift that was now being reinforced by the ministry. “Where if you can de-risk any aspect of your kids’ life, you’re expected to do it,” he said. “Keeping them in a padded cell – that’s not what childhood is about and that’s not how we grow responsible, capable humans.”