From what we have been told, the government is studying the open adoption laws of other jurisdictions to determine what would be the best for Manitoba. As far as we are concerned, just opening the adoption laws would be the best for Manitoba. So many other jurisdictions have done it and it is working well. What is different about the citizens of Manitoba?
I was given to understand that there would be some announcement very shortly about changes to the law, but have heard nothing yet. I appears that the government wants to go through a public information/discussion/opinion style of meeting again. The last one was done in 1997 and was shown to be in unanimous opinion that the adoption laws should be open. The government of the day must have recognized this because they passed the new law opening adoption records, but only for those people adopted after March 15, 1999. They will be able to get their identifying birth records, but the government did not see fit to make the law retroactive so there are thousands of adoptees being denied their birth information, and thousands of birthfamilies being denied information about the children given for adoption. The government can say that they have open adoption records. This is a fallacy because the open records only apply from March 1999 to the future and do not apply from approx. 1925 to 1999. Those adoptees and birthparents are still being treated as second class citizens, and are being denied information that all other citizens of Canada know by right of birth.
Please go to our website and send e-mails to all our MLA's, and the Minister of Family Services and Housing, voicing your opinion on this important subject. It is about time that all citizens of Manitoba and Canada are treated equally.
Roy Kading
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Wednesday, August 6, 2008
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