Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's a pleasure to be before you today to explain CIC's role. I'm accompanied today by Erica Usher, senior director, international region, who handles many of the operational aspects of helping to reunite or unite families.
I would like to lay out the role Citizenship and Immigration staff plays in the intercountry adoption process. I want to talk about the expediting of cases during the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath, and how those were truly extraordinary circumstances. I would also like to give you an idea of the type of support Citizenship and Immigration is offering for adoptive parents.
Let me begin by talking about CIC's role in intercountry adoptions.
As my colleague has mentioned, intercountry adoption is a three-pronged process involving the provinces and territories, given their responsibility for adoption, the country of origin of the child, and the Government of Canada.
The provinces and territories are responsible for things such as the home study, which ensures that conditions are right for bringing an adopted child into a new home. Then there is the country of adoption itself, which works to ensure that the adoption is done in accordance with its local laws. Then there is Citizenship and Immigration Canada's role in giving the adopted child permanent status to enter Canada, either as a permanent resident or as a citizen.
Throughout the approval process, CIC's first priority is to ensure that the best interests of the child are taken into account and are protected in accordance with our international obligations in adoption cases and our obligations under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Citizenship Act.
In some parts of the world, child trafficking is a serious concern, documentation is non-existent or unreliable, there is evidence of wrongdoing in the adoption system, or limited infrastructure exists to support the protection of children. In these cases, CIC works with the provinces to ensure the best interests of children being adopted by Canadians are respected.
As we know, international adoption is a complex process. Canadian families planning to adopt children in other countries should understand that even under ideal conditions it is a lengthy process.
We want to talk about how we were able to expedite things in Haiti after the earthquake and give some examples and some contrasts. Operation Stork resulted in the successful union of 203 Haitian children with their new families in Canada. It was a monumental task. In just a month and a half, the Government of Canada and the provinces and territories processed as many cases from Haiti as are normally done in about two years. But even during this expedited process there were protocols in place that we had to follow.
We must remember that the children who came to Canada in the aftermath of that disaster were children whose adoptions were advanced in the process. Where there was a record of an adoption being completed in Haiti prior to the January 12 earthquake, those children could move directly into the immigration or citizenship process to obtain permanent status in Canada. Children with adoptions in process were only brought to Canada for expedited processing if provincial authorities had no concerns about the integrity of the cases. Special permission was also granted by the Haitian government to remove the adoptive children from Haiti to bring them to Canada. Again, let me be clear that these were extraordinary circumstances.
The position of the Government of Canada is that during war or natural disasters, family tracing should be the first priority. That position is shared by UNICEF, UNHCR, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in respect of Inter-Country Adoption, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and International NGOs such as Save the Children Alliance.
In that situation, intercountry adoption should be envisaged for a child only as a last resort once all tracing efforts have been proved fruitless and if stable in-country solutions are not available. This normally takes many months, and could take many more in an unstable, post-disaster situation.
In closing, let me note briefly one of the things CIC is doing to help parents through the intercountry adoption process.
In the coming months, the department will be offering parents a step-by-step process on our website about how to best navigate through our role in the international adoption process.
This is something that is currently in development, and once it is complete, it will allow parents to make a more informed choice when applying for permanent residency or citizenship for their adopted child.
Thank you once again for the opportunity to speak before you.
I'm happy to answer any questions, as is my colleague.