Saturday, December 11, 2010

The end of another disappointing year

The 2010 sessions of the Legislature has now ended and still no change to the Adoption Act. After all the encouragement received from the government, only disappointment resulted. The process to change the Act began in 1999 and will have to carry on. The problem is that another election must be held on October 4, 2011, and if the present government gets defeated, then we start all over again.
The previous Conservative government refused to make the adoption records open retroactively, so wonder if they will have changed their thinking on this. If Bonnie Mitchelson, the minister in charge in 1999, gets to be Minister of Family Services, we will likely see no change under her leadership.
Our only hope is that the present government get re-elected so that what they are saying can be put into results, or that they open the records before the next election. This may be pretty hard to get through the legislature with the little time they sit in the spring and the fall will be a very short session.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Another disappointing year

The legislature has now adjourned for the summer, and there has been no announcement about opening the adoption law to make the adoption files from 1925 to March 15, 1999 open to those who deserve to have the information. It was one year ago that the government announced it was going to review the Act. I really don't know what there is to review. Other provinces and territories i.e. British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia Newfoundland/Labrador, Yukon and now Ontario all have opened their adoption acts and made all adoption files open, both past and future. What is taking Manitoba so long to do what is right? In the meantime total strangers still have access to your personal information, and the law prevents you, the person whose life it affects, from getting that information. This makes absolutely no sense. It is very difficult to understand, in this society where the 'invasion of privacy' supposedly is held to be a crime, how the government's action can be justified.