I'd also like to thank this committee for taking time to study support measures for adoptive parents.
My partner and I, both women, were legally married in 2005. Adoption was and remains the only way we could simultaneously be conferred equal parental rights in the creation of our family.
In 2006 we initiated a child-specific adoption in Ontario through Ottawa's Children's Aid Society for a pair of siblings, ages nine and eleven. Our children were placed with us in February 2007 and their adoption was finalized one year later.
My partner is due to give birth in April to a biological child that we conceived through a home insemination using semen from a known donor. I raise this because after she is born I will be pursuing a second parent adoption in order to be legally acknowledged as our daughter's parent.
My partner also was trained through the Adoption Council of Canada's program, and we co-founded the only post-adoption support group for LGBTQ families in Ottawa. Despite the loss of funding, we continue to run that support as volunteers in the community.
When our current children came to live with us, one had significant behavioural needs that eventually required placement in a year-long behavioural and academic intervention program. Both required intensive support and learning and were barely literate, despite being extremely intelligent. My son could add six rows of seven-digit numbers in his head, but at nine years old had not learned yet how to read the word “dog”.
Each received counselling to work through the instability, hurt, profound loss, and rejection they had experienced in their short lives. And when asked independently what they both needed to be happy in our family, they each used the word “security”, not “love”. They just wanted to know we weren't going--