Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I do have introductory remarks. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to have this opportunity today to speak with the members of the committee about Bill 10, which proposes amendments to the Adoption Act.
The Adoption Act was passed on November 1, 1998. It represents the culmination of more than ten years of work, including the work of the Family Law Review Committee, consultation with stakeholders from across the Northwest Territories, extensive review by the standing committee of the 13th Assembly who did additional public consultations, and considerable work done by departmental staff and legislative drafters. Since implementation, the department has provided four separate training sessions throughout the North to assist workers in learning how to use the act.
The new legislation made many improvements to the adoption system.
New provisions are included for subsidized adoptions to provide financial assistance for departmental adoptions. Pre -placement reports are now done for all children, whereas under the old scheme, private adoptions could be completed without ensuring the child was placed in a safe and suitable home.
The Adoption Act also provides for consultation with aboriginal organizations prior to placement of aboriginal children where the birth parent consents. The new system also allows for much greater involvement of the birth parents and allows for the courts to order continued access to birth parents or extended family members where it is in the best interests of the child.
Unlike the old Child Welfare Act, the new act provides for distinct processes to be followed for departmental, private and step-parent adoptions. Under the new legislation, step-parent adoptions are more streamlined. Before, children of step-parents had to be made permanent wards before they could be adopted. Private and out-of-territory adoptions were unregulated under the old legislation. The Adoption Act puts a process into place for private adoptions and strictly regulates out-of-territory placements.
The Adoption Act intentionally takes an open approach to adoptions in recognition of the best interests of the child and the rights of persons to information about who they are and where they come from. During the preparation of the act, the Minister accepted the recommendations of the standing committee of the 13th Assembly, which directed the Minister to make the adoption process completely open.
The act recognizes that closed adoptions are a southern way of doing things. It acknowledges the northern reality where it would be very difficult to keep someone from identifying information under any circumstances. The act makes no distinction between identifying and non-identifying information. Such a distinction is meaningless in such small communities where even a birthplace can be identifying.
Given this, the new act sets out to provide a formal system for disclosing information and arranging reunifications. It puts into place a support structure for adoptees and birth parents during the process of disclosing information or facilitating reunifications by ensuring they are offered counselling and given information about support services.
The vast majority of adoptions in the Northwest Territories are aboriginal custom adoptions which now are regulated by the Aboriginal Custom Adoption Act passed in 1995. Most remaining adoptions are private or step-parent adoptions. Only 17 departmental adoptions have occurred over the past four years.
Because so few numbers of children are adopted through this act, it will take several years to truly assess the benefits and impact of this new scheme. Therefore, it would not make sense to make changes outside of the spirit and intent of the act until the legislation has been in place for a few years. For this reason, the amendments being proposed are limited to changes within the original intent of the act.
The amendments to Bill 10 do not propose any changes outside of the original spirit and intent of the Adoption Act. Instead, the bill seeks to make several changes within the scheme that will improve the act. Some of the changes are being imposed as a result of the legislation having been in place for two years now.
This additional implementation time has given the registrar, the director of adoptions, frontline adoption workers and clients a chance to identify problems or issues not currently addressed in the act. Other parts of Bill 10 are designed to address oversights or gaps that were discovered during the preparation of the regulations. The latter are intended to ensure that all children who are adopted have the same rights to information about themselves. Finally, several minor rewording changes are proposed to improve clarity or make the terminology more consistent throughout the act. I would be pleased to answer any questions committee members may have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.