The end

The letter came yesterday. So many questions answered and so many more to ask.

All my guesses were wrong, but given what I know now I don't see how I could've known how and where to look. Maybe a private investigator would have known, and that's something that will bother me.

Nothing, nothing for 31 years and now this, all at once. Three decades of joy and heartbreak in one family, all read vicariously, all at once. Every 10 minutes, another Google query and another thundering revelation. It's an overwhelming, mind-blowing trip, but wherever it takes me, this is one trip I've always wanted to go on.

If only I could have left sooner. My consolation is that it wasn't my choice.

More later.

Stats on Post-Adoption Birth Information forms

Fifteen weeks and still waiting. I was recently forwarded some new stats on Post-Adoption Birth Information requests from the Ontario Ministry of Government Services. From conversations with Service Ontario I understand that they are still, as of this moment, processing the 2007 forms so it's obviously of interest to anyone who's not gotten their information yet just how many such forms there are.

Any numbers below should be taken as corrections to anything I published earlier.

Post-Adoption Birth Information forms received by the Ontario government, Sept 2007 to present

	September 2007	Jun 1–19, 2009	Jun 20-Jul 31	Total
All	372	3071	2693	6136
Filed by birth parent	95	1166		1261
Filed by adoptee	277	4603		4875

(The ? symbols indicate a lack of information on my part.)

Thirteen weeks later

I'll admit I had been prepared for some delays and thought the 6-8 week timeline unduly optimistic but I really believed that now, thirteen weeks after June 1, I would have got something in the mail.

Anecdotal accounts tell of some 2007 applicants having gotten their info, but these are few and hard to come by. Secondhand information suggests that the Ontario government has processed the first batch of the 2007 Post-Adoption Birth Information requests, with a large pile of 2007 requests and all 2009 requests still pending.

The government's handling of this wait period is absolutely inexcusable. All the applications yet processed are from 2007; all the relevant vetoes and other forms arrived, at latest, just after June 1. By mid-July, it must have been evident how long it would take to process these documents.

Instead of presenting us with a realistic time estimate, they tossed out 12 weeks as a bone to the baying masses. I spoke to a very polite ServiceOntario rep on the phone, so I'm quite sure of what they promised: 12 weeks from receipt of the request (or from June 1 for requests from 2007). It's now obvious that, just as they couldn't deliver in 6-8 weeks from June 1, they can't deliver now.

While I appreciate that adoption disclosure is not the Ontario government's highest priority, they have a duty not to offer us misleading time estimates. It's clear that on this file, they're bad schedulers, slow workers, or awful communicators. They have to step up their game: this is a one-time event, can't it justify a little more attention?