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In fact, doctors testified that another 11-year-old First Nations girl with cancer who dropped out of chemo at the same hospital earlier this year has now relapsed, said the lawyer.

“That is clear and unequivocal,” she said.

The girl in the latest case, whose identity is subject to a court-ordered publication ban, has spent the last several weeks in a Florida alternative-health centre, she and her parents deciding she had had enough of chemotherapy after 10 days of the treatment.

The hospital called on Brant Child and Family Services, which investigated and eventually decided it would not intervene, saying the case was a matter of health-care consent, not child protection.

McMaster Children’s then took the unusual step of asking a judge to force the agency to get the child back into chemo. The hearing has taken place sporadically over the last month, and is expected to conclude next Wednesday.

Ms. Jarvis conceded that the province’s Health Care Consent Act allows a patient of any age to potentially be capable of agreeing, or not, to treatment. In this case, though, it was clear to doctors that the girl was a typical 11-year-old and not sophisticated enough to make such a life-and-death decision.

When the parents then refused to keep her in chemo, it became a child-welfare matter, the lawyer said.

But Mark Handelman, the children’s aid society’s lawyer, said later that doctors did not properly determine if the girl was capable of giving or denying consent, as required by the health consent law.