Human Resources Committee on Nov. 25th, 2010

[Erica Usher]

We can only process children where the process has been finished in that country, according to the laws of that country. If a country tells us that the adoption has been legally done there, then we will carry it forward.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I have a couple of minutes left for you, Jeff.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

How much time do I have, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

A minute and a half.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm sorry, buddy.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

That's all right.

Thank you to our witnesses.

As we study federal supports for adoption, I see that there are essentially three things. One is looking at what supports are available. Are they sufficient? Then, ultimately, what is not being done that can be done? Those are questions for us to look at here around the table.

I want to start with data collection by your agencies. What types of data do you collect with respect to adoption? What is the federal government's role with adoption? Do you know how many children are available for adoption in Canada? Do we know what the average cost of an adoption is? Do we have analysis from federal departments about whether that's sufficient, or is there a barrier? Do you do any research into areas that may affect the federal government? What are long-term trends in intercountry adoptions?

I only want to get a sense of whether you collect data on this and what you collect. Do you do any research? If so, what?

[Jacques Paquette]

At the international level we are tracking the situation in different countries, and we are also trying to see what the availabilities are, because some of the countries that have good systems in place--when I say “good systems”, I mean a system that respects the fundamental principles that have been established in the UN convention. The question is to know exactly how many children might be available for adoption. That might also vary from one country to another.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Could you tell us, for example, how well aligned the demand would be for children in certain countries with the ease of adoption in a particular country, the integrity of their process? Is demand actually going to countries where they have internal systems in those countries that have a lot of integrity to their systems? Or is it non-aligned with that? Are we looking at demand being high in countries, for example, that don't have strong systems of integrity for adoption?

Can you tell me stuff like that?

[Jacques Paquette]

Right. I cannot talk about the international system overall, because I don't have it with me. But I can say that if we look at where most of the children adopted in Canada are coming from, the number one source is China, and the second one is the U.S.A. I would say that depending on the countries, when the system is not necessarily the best, we then have to spend much more time to make sure that the--

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Could you rank--

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

I'm sorry, Mr. Watson. That's your minute and a half, plus.

Could I clarify something you said, Mr. Paquette? The majority of adoptions are from China and from the U.S.

[Jacques Paquette]

If we look at the top 10 sources, what I have here, and I think that is probably information that CIC is tracking as well, is China, the U.S., Ethiopia, Vietnam, Haiti, Russia--I don't know if Haiti is on a regular basis or if it's specific cases recently--the Philippines. We can provide that information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much.

I think we have time for a very short round, so we'll do a three-minute round. We have about 15 minutes left.

We'll begin with Madam Minna, please.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Very briefly, to Mr. Paquette, the EI parental leave right now is what? Is it a year?

Sorry, the witness is busy and I don't want to lose time for that.

Maybe you can answer that. Right now we say a year, but is that exact?

[Louis Beauséjour, Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development]

No. In fact, right now there are 35 weeks of parental benefits available for parents, both adoptive parents and biological parents--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

It works for both.

[Louis Beauséjour]

That's 35 weeks of parental benefits.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's exactly the same. Okay.

My next question has to do with immigration, actually...well, actually both.

You obviously have specific information for different countries in terms of the in-country laws, if you like, for adoption. I'm thinking of a case that I dealt with from India. The gentleman who was adopting didn't take into consideration the Indian legal process, and somehow nobody connected it. A home assessment from Ontario was done.

Is there a connection? When a home assessment from the province is done, do they refer the client to you to try to really understand what the foreign country's adoption procedures are? In this case they made assumptions, which in the end delayed things for nearly ten years.

[Andrew Griffith]

Essentially, the process we follow is a two-step process. The first step, as you've mentioned, is really the provincial process, to ensure that the family is adequate. At that time, then, it basically is almost flipped to us by way of a request to facilitate the entry of the child into Canada. One of the challenges we find is that sometimes parents underestimate the country of origin of the adopted child and its rules and regulations and the time required. What we're trying to look at is how we can better—

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I don't have much time and I have another question.

It's not so much the time required; it's understanding what the foreign country's rules are for foreign adoptions and then following specifically those rules to get the right paperwork done. In this case, they misunderstood it completely and were doing the complete opposite of what they were supposed to be doing. That's one thing.

The other one, so that you can piggyback my questions, has to do with the fact that in some families in some countries adoption within family is not formalized. For instance, a family might have adopted into the family a nephew or a niece whom they are raising from a baby or whatever, but when they go to take that child out of the country, it becomes a real issue. How do you deal with those situations? That's question two.

One is, when a home assessment is done in the province, does the province at least tell that client to go to Immigration or to HRDC to get the information for the procedures to follow in the foreign country so that they don't do it wrong? In this case—

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

I'm sorry, your time is.... Just finish your question so that they can answer it.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Yes, okay.

In this case, the guy didn't have a lawyer and was just following customs in India, because he was from India. Is there a connection? And then there's the question about family adoption.

[Erica Usher]

In terms of communications, I don't know what the provinces advise, but certainly all of our missions overseas have information on their local websites about the procedure that we, CIC, will require.

That's not a complete answer to your question, because it may not give an indication of the local process, but it does give an indication as to what we, CIC, will require to be able to process that adoption. So the documents—