Evidence of meeting #35 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parents.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Andrew Griffith  Director General, Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Jacques Paquette  Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Erica Usher  Senior Director, Geographic Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Louis Beauséjour  Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Sandra Scarth  President, Adoption Council of Canada
Laura Eggertson  Board Member, Adoption Council of Canada
Paula Schuck  Cofounder, Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families
Kimberly Sabourin  Destiny Adoption Services
Carol van der Veer  Member, Support Group, Parents Adoption Learning Support
Lee-Ann Sleegers  Secretary, Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families

10:10 a.m.

Carol van der Veer Member, Support Group, Parents Adoption Learning Support

Yes. Thank you.

Well, the presentation is Jessica.

10:10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen

Oh, good.

10:10 a.m.

Jessica van der Veer

Hi.

10:10 a.m.

Member, Support Group, Parents Adoption Learning Support

Carol van der Veer

I'm going to let her speak. It is based on the EI issues and support groups.

10:10 a.m.

Jessica van der Veer

Thanks for inviting me to this committee hearing. I'm here representing PALS. My name is Jessica van der Veer. I'm 11 years old. I was born on December 7, 1998.

My tummy mommy was really young when she had me. We didn't really have a real home, so we couch-surfed everywhere. I was three and a half when I was left on a street corner for Durham CAS to pick me up. I have a brother, and he was left with me. I was always left alone, up until I was three, with my three younger brothers. Then I met my forever family.

In one week, I learned what adopted meant. I was told I was being adopted, and I was adopted.

It took more than a year to get used to the transition and to my forever family. I had a horrible first year of school. I was teased and left out of everything. I had three teachers, two schools, and a bunch of kids asking me questions I didn't want to answer. When I did, I was teased again.

I may not have been born in my mom's tummy, but I was born in her heart.

So why are we treated differently? By going to PALS, it has helped me understand my life more, and it's boosted my self-esteem and shown me I'm not alone.

10:10 a.m.

Member, Support Group, Parents Adoption Learning Support

Carol van der Veer

I'll add onto that, once I compose myself.

I'm very proud of you for coming here.

The reason I'm here is I want to show Jessica that Canada is a place where children have a voice.

Going through this process, as scary as it might be...this is where we can voice our concerns regarding the EI benefits. Had I given birth to my lovely daughter, I would have had 50 full weeks—35 parental and 15 top-up. I had 35 weeks. When the children went to school, and especially my son, we had several months of challenges. The schools wanted him out. He was incontinent, quite often peeing his pants. I needed to be there. I was called from work constantly to go home to deal with the issues Justin was having.

As Jessica said, the first year was challenging in school. There wasn't always a lot of support. She was told to stop talking about adoption, that we're her forever family. They weren't keen on the words or the acronyms that were being used. Our family, and I think some other families, feel it's a human right to be treated equally.

Really, fairness is not that everyone gets the same; fairness is that everyone gets what they need to succeed. To succeed as a family, I needed to be home a lot longer with my children. The transition was quite challenging.

CAS was our friend. I liked them being in my home. It was a normal thing for us. Our neighbours were mortified. They saw the CAS van coming again, thinking there were issues. There weren't. There were constant visits to see if we were struggling, which we were at times. There were attachment issues. There were a lot of other issues. So as not to embarrass Jessica, I won't go into those details. We're just coming out of them after six years, and it's been a challenge.

I've been teaching my children to advocate. Because you're adopted doesn't mean you don't have a voice or you can't say what you want. You can come to the highest level of government to give your voice and state that the EI benefits need to be longer, especially for adoptive families. I may not be physically recovering from giving birth; we're emotionally recovering.

Jessica had some physical recoveries to go through, and we needed the time to bond as a family. I feel that as adoptive support groups and families we can make a difference. We ask the government to change the EI benefits to equal that of birth families. That would mean the world for upcoming new adoptees.

I have to lead by example, so that's why we're here. If I talk about it, I need to pull through and also come to speak, and allow my daughter to voice her opinion too.

Thank you, and thanks for inviting us.

10:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here.

Jessica, you did a really good job with your presentation. Thank you.

10:15 a.m.

Member, Support Group, Parents Adoption Learning Support

Carol van der Veer

She has something for you.

Madam Chair, this is a picture of what a family looks like, and it's no different from any other family.

10:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen

Oh, that's great. Thank you. That's very nice. I'm going to pass it around. Isn't that nice? It's beautiful.

10:15 a.m.

Jessica van der Veer

That's what the family looks like, and it's no different from any other family. It looks normal.

10:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen

It's very nice.

All right. We have a very short time for questions; we have about 30 minutes. We'll do seven-minute rounds and then I would suggest that you share your time, if you have someone to share with.

Madam Minna.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to all of you. Jessica, welcome to the world of adults.

One of the things I found useful this morning was the information that we don't collect data across the country on children awaiting adoption—who they are, where they are, their age, and all the other things. I think the collection of data is extremely important, and that was an interesting piece for me this morning. Ms. Scarth, I think you were clear on that.

The other thing that is the lack of an MOU between the provinces and our country. It never ceases to surprise me how we fight so hard for free trade, but we have no free trade in our own country. Our economic strength as a nation would be much stronger if we had freer interprovincial trade and collaboration. But we seem to ignore that and don't fight for it. It permeates other levels, and it goes to things like skills development. If you're a masseuse in Ontario and you go to B.C., you have to train all over again or get recertified. Even on the professional level, we don't have MOUs.

I'm not trying to...this is just as important. I'm just saying that we have a really strange federation. Our federation is much too decentralized for the good of the country sometimes, in that we don't work together. I agree with you that this is an area we should be looking at.

With respect to the EI for 50 weeks, I'm not speaking for my party here; I'm speaking only as a member of this committee. I agree that we ought to give the same attention to adopted children as we do to birth children, for all of the reasons you have said and others have stated many times before.

I agree with those things. My only question has to do with changes to the federal tax act. I forget who mentioned it. It might have been Ms. Eggertson. Was it you, Ms. Shuck?

10:20 a.m.

Cofounder, Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families

Paula Schuck

Yes, it was.

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

Could you explain to me exactly what that would be? What do you mean by that? I think I missed what the change would be to the federal tax act.

10:20 a.m.

Cofounder, Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families

Paula Schuck

I'm no accountant, but—

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

You should be able to get, if you like, tax credits for travel.

10:20 a.m.

Cofounder, Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families

Paula Schuck

Sure. Where FASD is considered a disability, which it is, I would like to see our families supported a lot more—for research, travel to conferences, education, respite treatment. There are many different ways we could draw from that.

10:20 a.m.

Board Member, Adoption Council of Canada

Laura Eggertson

We had thought that perhaps the national child tax credit could be expanded to include invisible disabilities. We'd like the committee to do some research on that. We're looking for a way to support families with children with disabilities, many of whom start out in the foster care system and then are adopted without further supports. In many cases, they lose their supports when they get adopted. The money doesn't follow the child.

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

I see.

We were talking about children, and I think someone mentioned that seven years of age is considered to be unadoptable in our country. I wonder if any of you would have this information. I was doing some cross-country consultations for a social security review around 1994-95, and we met with youth 16 and up. They told us that as of 16 years of age they were no longer wards of the crown—they were on their own. Most kids 16 years of age in a family would not be kicked out of their home and told, “Thank you very much.”

Have any of you looked to see what that disconnect is, with respect to older children? I know it's provincial to a degree, but I guess it's something we need to be looking at. What happens to these young people? They're literally said goodbye to by the system at that point. Have you any experience with that, or any data on what happens to them?

10:20 a.m.

President, Adoption Council of Canada

Sandra Scarth

Yes. In our brief, we have quite a lot of data of what happens to them. There are no national studies done, but there are provincial studies. One in B.C. showed that 41% of the children, within five years of leaving care, were in the criminal justice system, compared to 6% in the general population.

We know that about 70% of these kids have disabilities of some sort, so when they go out, they become jobless, homeless. They end up on the street. The young women often have children, and then they lose their children to welfare. They really are at a huge disadvantage compared to kids who can come home. They even have no place to go for Christmas. That kind of thing is really bad.

Then they fall into poverty, so they are a burden on the criminal justice system, on the social welfare system. Mostly the burden is themselves. They really are in a terrible situation. They have no support of any kind, so they end up being in poverty, and they repeat the process. They end up becoming another welfare statistic; their children come into care, and it goes on and on, whereas for the children who are adopted here, the cycle is broken. My kids are in their 40s now; they're both doing fine. One is doing extremely well, and she came from a family of two alcoholics. As for her chances of getting out of the system at age 16, she would probably have ended up in the same situation as her parents. She is a wonderful mother of two little kids, and she's doing really well.

Adoption really is a huge benefit to these kids. There shouldn't be 30,000 out there who are waiting for adoption. A lot of families are waiting for these kids. They just don't know about them, and the system hasn't made it easy for them to do it.

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

A national registry--

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen

I'm sorry, that's all. We're really tight on time.

Madame Beaudin.

November 25th, 2010 / 10:20 a.m.

Bloc

Josée Beaudin Bloc Saint-Lambert, QC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here and welcome them to the committee.

Thank you for coming, Jessica, and I want to commend you on your comments.

My first question is for Ms. Scarth. You said earlier--

10:25 a.m.

President, Adoption Council of Canada

Sandra Scarth

Sorry, I didn't get the question.

10:25 a.m.

Bloc

Josée Beaudin Bloc Saint-Lambert, QC

You said earlier you were having a lot of trouble finding reliable data on children, First Nations and foster children. In your opinion, how can we secure that information?