Thank you.
I have a series of questions. I will ask them all and you can pick one.
Right now some parents have been waiting for their adoptions from the country of Nepal. They were told there is a suspension going on. Some of these parents have been waiting for many years. For this country, Nepal, perhaps there were some problems previously, but some of the 2009 adoptions need to be finalized. My office received some calls about that, so I am using this as an example of occasional situations where Canadian families who want to adopt children from some countries lose that opportunity. This could be one of the areas we could study, but Nepal is definitely a problem.
The number two area that I can flag is that the immigration committee last year discussed the issue of how second-generation children, if born abroad, could become non-citizens. For example, if I am born outside of Canada and my adopted child happens to be living in Beijing and has a child there, my granddaughter will become stateless. She will not be a Canadian citizen. That would apply only to adopted kids who come into the country as landed immigrants. This is an area that's a problem. A lot of parents with adopted kids say that it's not fair for their children if they end up having children outside Canada. This is a second area that we might consider.
There is a third area that may be worthy of discussion. I know that a lot of the children's aid societies across Canada--especially the one in Toronto, for example--are looking for foster parents, especially in some of the ethnic communities. Some kind of countrywide promotion of people who want to be foster parents may be an area that this committee or the federal government can look at.
The fourth area that I think may be of interest, and on which I want your comment, is that I know that a higher percentage of teenagers who are from foster homes sometimes get into trouble and end up leaving home. Some of them have great difficulty finding housing when they turn sixteen, so housing for kids who are from adopted or from foster care homes is an area that this committee can possibly look at.
I thought I would present those four areas that came to my mind and see if you can comment on any of them.