Human Resources committee  My recommendation is slightly different, Jeff, in terms of promoting a national knowledge exchange centre. I think the question, in terms of strategy, is always how ambitious one wants to be.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  That would be an overstatement. We're actually being funded under a program called “Every Child Matters: Strengthening Foster Families in Canada”, which is a national foster care development project. I understand it's $600,000 over three years, so $200,000 a year.

Human Resources committee  Just this year, 2010. And the exercise, in terms of working with the provinces, is to collect their data for foster care.

Human Resources committee  It would require major discussions between governments to standardize the information. As it stands, you've got 13 different reports with 13 substantively different definitions.

Human Resources committee  Sure, I'd be glad to. The next recommendation was about an enhanced prevention fund for first nations. You probably heard from INAC that they are moving ahead with the enhanced prevention funding. We would suggest that it be done in 2011-12. The other area that we felt was impo

Human Resources committee  I would say, particularly in the province of Quebec, that things have moved along in the last five years. This really had to do with the concept of permanency.

Human Resources committee  That really speaks to this issue in terms of the mindset toward the objective of moving children to permanency, no matter their age. It's clearly one of the issues in training and best practices that it's still not clearly understood within the system. The other barrier tends to

Human Resources committee  There are a number of things there. There are legal impediments, organizational impediments, and informational impediments. Let me dwell on the information part of it. When we don't know what's going on with kids within the system, it's hard for the system to monitor and correct

Human Resources committee  That's a fair statement.

Human Resources committee  Because of the different situations involved, I don't think it's quite as easy as that. I think the lesson for Canadians is one of looking at our existing frameworks. The Canada social transfer is about $19 billion a year, and a good portion of that is for social programs. To t

Human Resources committee  The short answer is yes, we are. Part of that is because we really are 13 jurisdictions. The adoption exchanges are really all done within 13 jurisdictions, and what it is that we do at a national level is really over into the voluntary sector.

Human Resources committee  My colleague has been very helpful.

Human Resources committee  Thanks very much, Ms. Hoeppner. Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to provide information to you regarding adoption in Canada. This is a summary presentation. I will focus on the questions related to domestic adoption only. The issues regarding adoption are very co