Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's not uncommon. We weeded through that too with our second adoption. We were veterans and we helped a lot of other families, including the two families who were there with us.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure if there's a government fix for that, because we used the website, which is basically accurate. We had an adoption facilitator who helped us here in Ontario whom we relied on strongly. To me it was specific to the office in Accra in our case. Misinformation was comin

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely without a doubt.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I'm definitely biased in this so take it with a grain of salt, but we're trying to make a better life, at the risk of sounding like.... We're here to form a family, grow our family, and to be put into limbo particularly with some of the adoptions out of western Africa, where

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The part that was discouraging was that when we applied for a visa for our first son, that visa came to us in three months and it was processed in Nairobi, Kenya. We used that for our planning when we prepared to go over there. We figured three months, plus or minus. Even if it w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thanks a lot. The first thing that comes to mind is some transparency so we would know where our application is in the system. Secondly, for us—and for many of the other families—it comes at quite a significant cost to travel overseas to build or grow our family. To be able to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we were. It took us doing an email campaign to start raising a lot of noise. When we left, there had been a family that had previously created a lot of noise. This was our choice to go to Africa. We weren't going there and expecting any kind of special treatment, but when

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Coincidentally, we sat on the flight to Lagos, Nigeria with a family from Amsterdam. They were doing the same thing we were doing. Their adoption process in Nigeria followed in line with our adoption process. We both completed it at the same time. Four weeks after they submitted

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's correct. They had their visas in four weeks. They were on a plane. It's kind of rubbing it in. At that time, we were having a great time in Africa. We had a great time all the way through, but we were getting desperate when borders shut down and we were being told

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, they got their visa today, so it was pretty exciting for them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, thank you for permitting me the opportunity to take part in this committee. My name is Robert Thiessen. We are an adoptive family. In March of this year, we were in Accra, Ghana, desperate to get home. Ghana had closed its borders to all travel. The Canadian High Co