Mr. Speaker, the bill before this House today deals with international adoption. This is an eagerly awaited measure that we have always supported and promoted in this House.
I have the pleasure of speaking today about Bill C-14, which essentially amends the provisions of the Citizenship Act relating to international adoption. This bill will have numerous implications in the lives of all adoptive parents in Quebec as well as in the other provinces. Bill C-14 will eliminate the requirement that a sponsorship application be filed under the “family reunification” requirement.
Under the provisions that are proposed, children born outside Canada and adopted by a Canadian citizen will be able to acquire citizenship without first having to become a permanent resident and comply with the procedure associated with permanent residence. Once the citizenship application is made, citizenship will be granted if the adoption meets certain conditions. The child becomes a Canadian citizen on the day that citizenship is granted.
In Quebec, citizenship will be granted once the adoption process is finalized, before the adoption has been officially ordered by the Court of Québec.
The Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-14 in principle. We waited for a long time for a bill that would finally respect Quebec’s jurisdiction in respect of adoption, while granting the children of adoptive parents citizenship more quickly. We are pleased that the explanations we have offered in recent years have borne fruit. We are particularly glad to see that the federal authorities will be respecting the jurisdiction of the Court of Québec and its role as the authority that officially orders the adoption of the child.
In Quebec, the best interests of the child is the fundamental principle in international adoptions. The Bloc Québécois members agree with that principle. In 2004, Quebec took an important step in applying that principle when it incorporated the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption.
In Quebec, all decisions concerning a child must be made in the child’s best interests and must respect the child’s rights. That rule is fundamental when it comes to adoption. An adoption must also meet the conditions set out in the law. What we generally call international adoption is referred to, in legal terms, as “the adoption of a child domiciled outside Quebec”. Quebec adoption laws thus go much further and cover both adoptions that take place in a foreign country and adoptions that take place in the other provinces and territories of Canada.
The statutory provisions that refer to the best interests of the child, and the statutory instruments that govern international adoption in Quebec, are as follows. We have the Civil Code; the Code of Civil Procedure; the Youth Protection Act; the Order respecting the adoption without a certified body of a child domiciled outside Québec by a person domiciled in Québec; the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption; the Act to Implement the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption and amending various legislation relating to adoption; and the Order respecting the certification of intercountry adoption bodies.
These instruments establish the conditions that must be met in Quebec by Quebeckers who wish to adopt. The Civil Code of Québec also deals with types of adoption and the effects of adoption. The rules governing consent and the “adoptability” of a child are the rules that apply in the child’s country of origin.
International adoption procedures vary according to the child’s country of origin. In Quebec, there are three ways of going about it. First, there are the cases where the child’s country of origin decides in favour of foreign adoption. Then there are the cases where the country of origin decides first on the placement of the child, as happens for example in the Philippines and Thailand. There are two steps to this procedure: the parents remain the adopted child’s guardians until the child’s country of origin is satisfied that they have fulfilled all the conditions during the placement period. The third case is much less problematic. Here the country of origin has ratified the Hague Convention and its decision can be officially recognized by the Secrétariat à l'adoption internationale.
The international adoption secretariat is the central authority in Quebec and operates in partnership with approved international adoption agencies. The secretariat draws up an international adoption file containing all the necessary legal documentation and forwards the adopting parent's file to the adopted child’s country once the verifications have been completed. The secretariat ensures that the proposal is consistent with the recommendations in the psychosocial evaluation of the adopting parents.
When it is satisfied, the secretariat issues a letter of non-opposition. It is sent to the immigration authorities in Canada and Quebec and confirms that, after examining the documentation and the procedure that was followed, the secretariat has no reason to oppose the child’s coming to Quebec and Canada. Procedures are then followed in the child’s own country and the way is paved for the child’s coming to Quebec.
Adoption in Quebec confers parentage on the adopted child that replaces his or her original parentage. At that point, the child ceases to be a member of his or her original family.
Adoption decisions pronounced abroad must be officially recognized by a Quebec court to take effect in Quebec, with the exception of countries that have signed the Hague Convention. The responsibility for this task falls to the Court of Québec’s Youth Division.
The new provisions that are proposed would allow adopting parents to apply for citizenship in advance before the adoption is officially approved by the Court of Québec. Without this, adopting parents and adopted children in Quebec would not be in a position to benefit from the citizenship bill.
At the same time, another administrative measure could be applied immediately to speed up the process of awarding citizenship: rapid identification of the application at the Case Processing Centre. A special indication could be added on the application mailing envelope to specify and clearly identify that this is an international adoption application. When the child is travelling to Quebec, measures could be considered to improve communications between the different airports, to the delight of the adoptive parents who want to see administrative measures that do their job.
Each successive government has promised us major and necessary revisions to the Citizenship Act. You are surely aware of how long parliamentarians have been working on this sort of legislation, and I am pleased that we are agreeing to move quickly to refer the bill on adoption to committee.
Other citizenship measures will have to be tabled here in this chamber, as recommended by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in the last parliamentary session. For example, there is no substantive appeal in the case of citizenship applications, and the government limits recourse to judicial review in the event of a negative decision. In this regard, sponsorship under the “family reunification” class seems to offer more protection for adoptive parents. We have been told this by the organizations testifying before the standing committee.
We have been waiting long enough. We have been waiting for these sorts of legal provisions since 1998. In fact, a decision of the Federal Court of Appeal found that the government is violating section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as it pertains to adoption.
In granting adopted children citizenship more quickly, the federal government is finally taking account of the best interests of the child.
The adoptive parents have to start a long series of procedures. They have had enough of long waits in dealing with the federal government to adopt a child. I am certain that speeding up the awarding of citizenship will facilitate the integration of adopted children in their new family.
I would be remiss if I did not bring up the issue of adoption treaties, and the validity of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine and the necessity of recognizing it in this field, in the interest of the child. For Quebec to be able to exercise its adoption and civil law powers, it should be able to conclude its own adoption treaties with the children’s countries of origin. It is the responsibility of the federal government to permit Quebec and the provinces to negotiate specific international agreements in the field of international adoption. Until it does so, we will continue to see the unfortunate consequences of its irresponsible management, such as those caused by the distressing episode of the adoption treaty with Vietnam, where the federal position is bad, plainly dysfunctional and increasingly indefensible.
We have here another example where the federal government must grant Quebec the ability to fully assume its constitutional jurisdiction on the international stage. Whatever it claims, the federal government does not have exclusive jurisdiction in international relations, for the Constitution does not state which level of government is responsible for international relations.
I repeat: since the Government of Quebec is responsible for adapting the Civil Code of Quebec, the Code of Civil Procedure and the Youth Protection Act, the Government of Quebec alone is in a position to guarantee that the rights of children will be respected. An adoption treaty concluded between the federal government and a foreign country could not offer such a guarantee. It is therefore imperative that Quebec conclude its own adoption treaties.
