Legislative Issues

Montreal, January 25, 2000

The long-awaited recommendations are in: public adoption records in Québec should be unsealed, the government report says. Although this is only a recommendation, and not the final legislation, this news is very, very welcome to Triad members who seek post-adoption information and/or contact! Despite initial concerns about how these important hearings may have gone, for the past months rumours of the good news have been trickling our way from the Mouvement Retrouvailles, who maintain close ties to the province's social services.

Wherever you can -- via call-in shows, letters to ministers Gilles Baril and Linda Goupil, to the editor of your local paper, speaking to your friends and family -- speak out for unsealing the records! This report has to have broad public support if it is to pass into law. Remember that similar legislation in other provinces has been defeated -- this is YOUR chance to help make change happen, in your lifetime!

Meantime, a big THANK YOU to André Desaulniers , the pro-open records adoptee who's toiled for over a decade for these very results! He's the architect behind this great news!

Unseal Records-- Report
Birth parents, adoptees would have right of veto

by Basem Boshra
(this article appeared in the Montreal Gazette 25/01/2000)

A government-commissioned report is recommending Quebec open its adoption records and give adoptees the right to know the identities of their birth parents.

The unreleased report - commissioned jointly in March 1998 by the ministers of health and justice, and obtained yesterday by Global Television News - is to be presented next month to Gilles Baril, the provincial minister responsible for youth protection.

Its recommendations will be reviewed this spring, and if adopted, would make Quebec and British Columbia the only provinces with open adoption records.

The 100-page report also suggests birth parents and adoptees be allowed to remain anonymous by giving them a veto to keep their files sealed.

Thierry Audin, a spokesman for Baril, said last night he wasn't aware the report was even completed.

"We haven't even seen a preliminary version of the report, let alone the final one," Audin said. "We can't comment on it until we at least see it."

Pat Danielson, head of the Montreal chapter of Parent Finders - a non-profit volunteer organization that supports families separated by adoption - was elated by the study's recommendations.

"I'm extremely pleased," she said. "This is exactly what our organization has been aiming for - to have open records."

Danielson, 53, was reunited with her biological son 3 1/2 years ago and was raised by a mother who was adopted.

"From personal experience, I know the effects not knowing who one's birth parents are can have, and I think this will be so good to so many people," Danielson said.

An estimated 200,000 Quebecers were adopted in the last 50 years alone.

Dawn Upfold, a Montrealer who spent more than 10 years seeking her biological family, was also pleased with the report's recommendations.

"I think it's a good first step," Upfold said. "I'd like to know who I am." "They have the info. They have a file and I can't get at it."

That should change, says the report written by Vital Simard, a planning adviser to the Department of Health and Social Services.

Current adoption laws are designed to protect the privacy of birth parents. But the report says the laws were drafted in a different era when unwed mothers faced severe social stigmas.

Simard's report also suggests adoptees should have the right to know their lineage to screen for genetic diseases, something that comes as bittersweet news for Danielson.

She said her mother died at age 59, and Danielson believes not knowing the health backgrounds of her birth parents might have contributed to her death.

"I truly believe that if she had access to her medical history, she would have lived a much longer life," Danielson said.

"At least now adoptees will be able to know if they or their children are at risk of a disease that's genetic. If only for that reason, these recommendations are great news."

Since 1931, all Quebec birth records are confidential and unavailable to the general public.

Currently, adoptees do not have the right to apply to the province for official copies of their records - hospital records or original birth certificates, for example.

But they do have the right to apply to the social agency that handled the adoption for non-identifying information, including the name of the hospital, details of the birth, first (given) birth names only, and a description of the birth mother and maternal family and of the birth father and paternal family.

Adoptees younger than 18 must have their adoptive parents apply for this information.

But Upfold said the cost of having a social worker search the records - $450 - is prohibitive for some and with the long waiting lists, it could take up to 10 years to yield any results.

"Hopefully, this will speed up the process and be more affordable for everyone," Upfold said.

Any changes to the adoption laws would require amendments to the province's Civil Code and its Youth Protection Act.