Adoption in Canada

Lorne Welwood

An estimated one in seven Canadians is directly affected by adoption. In any classroom, workplace or church group, you will likely encounter an adopted person, a birth parent, an adoptive parent or grandparent, a sibling of an adopted person. Adoption is also surrounded by strong emotions and opinions.

Adoption practices

Part of the reason for the strong feelings and opinions is the way in which adoption laws and practices changed in the early 20th century in Western countries.

From time immemorial, all cultures have had ways of providing family settings for children who were orphaned or abandoned. In many cases, there was no particular formality. Children were raised by the extended family anyway, so if the child's immediate parent was unavailable, there was nothing particularly unique. In other cultures, where ancestry was crucial to the religion or being childless was a disgrace, formal adoption of some kind was practised.

Early in this century, the system of secret adoption became the norm in Western societies. Ironically, it was designed to protect the participants from shame--the shame of being a "loose woman", a "bastard child" or a "barren couple". After a few decades, most participants and professionals are giving that system a failing grade and calling for a return to honesty and openness for the health of all concerned.

In Canada, adoption laws are a provincial matter, so they vary somewhat across the country. Adoptions are handled in several different ways:

• Provincial child welfare departments do adoptions in all provinces.
• Several provinces have licensed non-profit societies as adoption agencies.
• Some provinces permit "private" adoptions.

All jurisdictions in Canada require adoptions to be approved in court in order to register a legal change of parentage. However, aboriginal "custom adoptions" may be recognized in law for various purposes. Many provincial adoption laws also recognize adoptions completed in another country whose formalities may be quite different from ours. As long as the adoption is one which creates a legal permanent family for the child, it will tend to be recognized.

British Columbia's new Adoption Act states that its purpose is "to provide for new and permanent family ties through adoption, giving paramount consideration in every respect to the child's best interests". Most jurisdictions in Canada have a similar purpose for their adoption regulations, although the legislation may not spell it out so clearly.

Because each province has its own adoption system and because of the variety of kinds of adoption, it is very difficult to get accurate statistical information. It is relatively easier to get information on numbers of adoptions involving children in the care of government child welfare bodies than for other types of adoptions (see sidebar). Adoptions by relatives and by step-parents constitute a significant number but are also hard to quantify because in most provinces they do not have to be approved by government or licensed agencies.

We do know that the number of domestic adoptions (those where the child was born in Canada) reached its peak in the early 1970s and has sharply declined in the past few years. Two of the reasons are the increased availability of abortion, and the increased acceptability of and support for single parenting. This has contributed to a complete reversal of the "supply and demand" in the last 25 years. Instead of healthy newborn children waiting for families, thousands of Canadian families are waiting to adopt such children. This situation has been compounded by the increase in infertility rates (see MBH, May 2, 1997). These factors have increased the pressure on adoption service regulators to prevent "baby brokering" (the selling of babies) and other questionable practises which develop when such a strong felt need as being a parent cannot find legitimate expression. It has also greatly contributed to the increase in adoption of children from outside Canada.

Intercountry adoption

In several provinces, intercountry adoptions now outnumber domestic ones. Until the 1950s, intercountry adoption was rare. This changed with the publicity given Korea's wartime orphans by World Vision, but the numbers remained relatively modest until 1990. Then, when television pictures of the horrific conditions in Romania's post-Ceaucescu orphanages were beamed into the living rooms of wealthy nations, the hearts of many were moved. Besides sending aid, many families also got on planes and went to rescue some of these children through adoption. Hundreds of them came to Canada.

A reality of intercountry adoption is that the children are available because of some tragedy--war, famine, extreme poverty, racism or some combination of these. Therefore, most children adopted into Canada from abroad come from such places as Romania, Russia, China, Haiti and Latin America. One might think that wartorn and poverty-stricken African countries would be on this list, but Canada does not have adoption treaties with them.

Another reason for babies being available is politics. That is the case for China, where the "one child" policy has led to thousands of abandoned female babies being cared for in orphanages. With the help of skilled facilitators, adoption from China may, in fact, have fewer pitfalls than from many other countries where political instabilities seem to result in the adoption rules changing frequently and unpredictably.

A large number of black or bi-racial children are also adopted into Canada from the United States. Whether this is due to racism (American families being reluctant to adopt them) or the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of children born outside marriage in the US are Afro-American is not clear. Two Christian agencies in Georgia and Texas account for many of those placements. This option is attractive because the US legal and social system is similar to our own; there is no language barrier (if you don't count Texan); communications, banking and travel systems are excellent; and the children have usually had good health care.

This is in contrast to the situation in most other countries from which children are adopted. Many children are likely to suffer from malnutrition of the body or, worse, the soul. Studies are confirming that institutionalization, in and of itself, has a major negative effect on a child's healthy development. Most children adopted from Russia, Romania, China, Haiti and some Latin American countries have been cared for in institutions. In many intercountry adoptions (as increasingly here), the children are likely to have been prenatally affected by alcohol or drugs.

Intercountry adoption is also the most expensive way to adopt. With home studies, translation, legal costs, travel, accommodation, facilitator fees, and donations to orphanages, costs may well be in the range of $20,000. In contrast, some adoptions through provincial child welfare departments in Canada are virtually free.

So why would anyone adopt from abroad? Beside compassion are other, not so altruistic reasons. One of them is certainty. If applicants have an approved home study and meet the eligibility requirements of one of the countries mentioned, they can be virtually assured of one or more children being placed with them. There are many available. For this certainty, many are willing to pay the monetary price as well as the price of struggling with language difficulties, cultural and racial differences and health risks.

Another factor is ignorance. Many people are unfamiliar with the difficulties created by the differences in language, culture, living conditions and medical systems.

Some also wish to avoid having to work in the domestic system where, increasingly, birth parents are choosing the homes for their children and wishing for some sort of ongoing communication or contact. For adoptive applicants unaware of the potential benefits of such openness, as well as the safeguards which are in place, the prospect can be very daunting.

For those who have compassion for needy children and are willing to provide an adoptive home, perhaps the best option is children in government care right here in Canada. The Adoption Council of Canada reports that, of the approximately 40,000 children in foster care in Canada, between 14,000 and 18,000 are available for adoption--and only about 1250 of these are adopted each year! They have from mild to significant special needs, but on the positive side, the waiting periods to adopt are short; the health and social histories are likely to be known; the costs are very low; and no cultural, dietary or language changes are needed.

SIDEBAR #1

Public adoption in Canada

Following are the figures for adoptions through provincial child welfare departments in Canada for the years 1993-94 and 1994-95, taken from the Child and Family Services Annual Statistical Report.

SIDBAR #2

Adoption and international law

In response to the explosion in international adoptions in the early 1990s, the Hague Convention on Private International Law adopted a "convention" in 1993. Its purpose is to regulate the adoption of children to ensure that the best interests of the children are protected and to avoid children being sold for a profit.

The Hague Convention is now a treaty with 30 signatories. Each country has to ratify it in its own legislature and put in place laws and regulations to implement it. The treaty came into force in Canada April 1, 1997, but not all provinces have implemented it.

There is ongoing debate about the convention's benefits. There is agreement with the intent to prevent abuses, but concern that the bureaucracy will virtually choke off the adoption process.

Lorne Welwood and his wife Ann founded Hope Pregnancy and Adoption Services in Abbotsford, B.C. in 1986. They attend Northview Community Church and are adoptive parents and grandparents.

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