The number of Native children in care in Canada has surpassed the number during the height of the residential school system, according to a First Nations leader hired by the Ontario government.

John Beaucage, the province's first Aboriginal Advisor to the Minister of Children and Youth Services, has been studying the issue for a year. He says Native children make up 10 to 20 percent of the child welfare system even though they are just 2 percent of the general population.

"It's a culmination of decades worth of social ills," Beaucage told the Canadian Press.

Former auditor general Sheila Fraser estimated that Native children are eight times more likely to be in care than other youth.

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First Nations children still taken from parents (CP 8/2)