Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues who have spoken in the debate on Motion No. 386. I also thank the minister for her openness in considering a study by a parliamentary committee. I thank the opposition party critics as well who have spoken in support of my motion.
We are on the cusp of a landmark study on adoption in Canada backed by what I hope will be the unanimous resolve of this House. There is no better time to do this than in November, which is Adoption Awareness Month across North America.
I also want to thank my wife Sarah, mom to our five biological children. As a family we support three children and their parents through Compassion Canada. We have been readying our hearts and our home to receive through international adoption what we hope will be a baby girl from China.
My biological mother came to Canada from Croatia, four months pregnant with me, in 1970. A teenage mother sponsored by an uncle, she hid her pregnancy and ultimately put me up for adoption in 1971. Incidentally, that was the first year of maternity benefits in Canada. While we have added benefit improvements to support parents, we have not had the opportunity to take a cross-country look into what I call the infrastructure supporting adoption. I submit this is the time to do that.
As an MP and with all the privileges of such an office, I am wary of giving direction to standing committees as they are masters of their own affairs, but let me offer a couple of suggested principles to guide a detailed study on adoption.
First, family is the building block of any society. Society, including through the policies of government, has a deep and abiding interest in the successful attachment of adopted children to their adoptive parents as much as it does in biological children to their biological parents. Second, though biological and adoptive parenting may differ, they are of equal value.
Let us dream big for just a moment. I have a vision of a Canada big enough and loving enough to affirm the value of all children, adoptive and biological, children from both Canada and abroad. We have the affluence to open our hearts and homes. We have couples with the desire to adopt. We have some of the pieces in place to make adoption possible.
We have not achieved permanent placement in stable families for all children. Foster parenting is an amazing calling, to open up one's heart and home temporarily, knowing a child could be placed with a permanent family in short order, only to open up one's heart and home temporarily again for another child. Foster parenting is an amazing thing.
Too many children are in foster care today in Canada, growing up within that system and without the stability of a permanent loving family and the strong attachments of family so necessary to successful life outcomes. Adoption needs to work for them too, from toddler to young adult.
Then there are children with special needs, beautiful and uniquely gifted for their own special calling in life. Quick adoption is usually available for these children, yet there are many who are still not adopted. Adoption needs to work for them too.
What about children the world over who are victims of natural disaster, famine, civil unrest or war? Those among us willing and able to adopt are key to the well-being of such children. The mid-20th century infrastructure of adoption is not enough to make such permanent placement in Canadian families a reality.
Maybe it is time we created an adoption class at Citizenship and Immigration Canada where such children in need of parents who cannot be placed in stable families in their own country of birth could find a new family in Canada. That would take a new paradigm of thinking, a new infrastructure for adoption in Canada.
There are myriad challenges facing adoptive parents in Canada as well. There are no systematic post-adoption supports for Canadian parents after the child is placed in the home. There are many things for the human resources committee to study.
I encourage the HUMA committee to do a big study, not a little one, and engage Canadians from sea to sea in its discussion. Its report is going to be looked at by not just this government but by many people across Canada. I know studies provide lots of recommendations, but I suggest that the committee draw attention to a couple of really important ones. Otherwise people may say there is just too much to do. We want to avoid bureaucratic inertia.
I call on all members of the House to please support Motion No. 386, keeping in mind the thousands of hopeful parents and thousands more children, from infant to adolescent, who want adoption for their futures.