Categorically, it doesn't seem that adoption or fostering is on anybody's planning and priorities, internally, from what I can tell. When I asked the human resources department, I wanted to ask them two things. One was, are you collecting the information categorically...the word “adoption”? I asked for access to information using the word “adoption”, the word “fostering”. Then secondly, I wanted to know, if they were collecting the information, was it getting to the decision-makers--yourselves? The answer is no.
Actually, I asked the human resources department for Monte Solberg's briefing manual, for anything in his briefing manual that might have told the minister responsible for HRSDC what's going on in fostering, adoption, domestically, and the answer was there's nothing in his briefing manual. So how do you do what you're doing without studies like this? One of my recommendations is that it goes broader.
I went to Health Canada. Health Canada said, “Well, we don't collect data that way. Thank you very much. Could you please go to the provinces?” I went to six provinces with the same question, the same request: can I see what's in the briefing manual for ministers responsible for this? Alberta came back. That was the most startling. After a series of dialogues with Alberta, they essentially said, “We do collect the information. Here's some of it. In terms of having access to the information on how we brief the minister responsible in Alberta...”--yabba, yabba, yabba--“...national security.” They refused to give me that information.
At that point, I thought this is absolutely nuts that, categorically, your people, our people, are not collecting the data domestically. Secondly, if they do have it, they're not even briefing.... Does the Prime Minister of Canada even know there are 30,000 kids out there? This is a burden that I share, my daughter shares. I think, are you getting it at the top?