Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his input and for his personal experience on this bill. One issue is indirectly related to adoptions. I want to bring it to the attention of the House and maybe get the member's input.
A number of years back, I believe, CBC did a special on a young girl who was adopted from Romania. I believe she was about eight years old. She had parents in Romania, but she was in an orphanage because her mother could not take care of her. This young girl was adopted. Her father was a physician. As soon as she was adopted, she lost her Romanian citizenship because of the legislation that existed in Romania. Within a couple of years, her adoptive parents sent her back to Romania and adopted someone else.
The reason I raise this is once the young girl went back to Romania, because she was no longer a Romanian citizen, she could not go to school. She came from a bad situation, but by coming to Canada, supposedly for a better life, she ended up a lot worse. I believe a lawsuit is going on about this.
I raise this not in the context of this legislation. This legislation has a chance of improving the process, but it raises the question of giving this individual citizenship. Once this young girl was sent back to Romania, she was stateless. She had landed status in Canada, but once she left here, she lost that status and she had not status in Romania.
We probably should look at some kind of legislation separate from this one. In this case, if we had the legislation before us, she would have been a Canadian citizen. She had landed status, but when she left, she was neither a Canadian citizen nor a Romanian citizen. Therefore, this would have addressed the important issue about being stateless.
At some point in time I hope we can perhaps deal with legislation that will address the morality of the issue where this young girl was very much victimized. Has the hon. member heard about that case or if he is familiar with it?