How far we've come

Well, it's been six weeks since Disclosure Day. If the 6-8 week time estimate from ServiceOntario is to be believed, those of us who had left-over post-adoption birth information requests from 2007 should be getting responses any day now. I'm still waiting, of course.

I thought it would be interesting to note just how far we've come over the years on adoption disclosure. The following article is from the Globe and Mail back in 1984, about the apparently successful campaign by Frank Drea, an adoptive parent and the Minister of Community and Social Services, to restrict Children's Aid Societies from distributing non-identifying information to adult adoptees. He argued that "in a small town it could be a neon sign with an arrow pointing to the innocent party."

To their credit, the CASes fought back hard against Drea's law, and it seems to have gotten scrapped in 1985 right after the Davis government was defeated, but it's amazing that back then even non-id was something contentious.

I was a child then, and it's hard to imagine what that era must have been like for adult adoptees, who then needed permission from adoptive parents to sign onto the Adoption Disclosure Register! It's almost incredible that just two years later, the Garber study would recommend that adult Ontario adoptees should have unqualified access to the identities of their birth parents: something which is contentious even now.

Adoption bill may bring suit

Saturday, November 24, 1984

The Metro Toronto Children's Aid Society is considering legal action against the province if legislation prohibiting the disclosure of certain information to adoptees is passed.

"We will certainly explore a constitutional challenge if the legislation in its present form is proclaimed," Doug Barr, the agency's executive director, said yesterday.

His concern, shared by other children's aid directors, is aimed at new child welfare legislation that restricts the societies from releasing non-identifying information, except when medically necessary, to adoptees they have placed.

Since the mid-1960s, children's aid societies have agreed to release to adoptees who request it, information relating to social, religious and academic background of their birth parents.

Child welfare officials say the legislative change is being pushed by Frank Drea, Minister of Community and Social Services, because he is an adoptive parent.

Mr. Drea has argued that information considered non-identifying in an urban centre could risk confidentiality in a small town.

The Child and Family Services Act, which enshrines the new adoption provisions, goes before the Legislature for third and final reading next month.

Lobbying by child welfare officials and Parent Finders Inc., a group concerned with the rights of adoptees, failed to produce amendments to the controversial disclosure clause when it was reviewed by a committee of legislators on Thursday night.

William Wrye, the Liberal Party's social services critic, unsuccessfully put forward an amendment that would have given adoptees over 18 the right to non-identifying information.

Mr. Wrye criticized the disclosure provisions as "disenfranchising thousands of young adults" from information on their backgrounds, "which is important to them and makes them feel more secure." George Caldwell, executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, said he is unhappy with the disclosure clause.
"I don't know why he (Mr. Drea) is doing it," Mr. Caldwell said.

Jeffrey Wilson, a Toronto lawyer, said adoptees in the United States have been unsuccessful in their constitutional challenge to get access to their records.