The Waiting List From Hell
Philip Burge, The Globe & Mail
March 21, 2000

If you've ever had to wait for a routine hospital procedure then you know how distressful it is. Adult adoptees wait more than seven years for the Ontario Adoption Disclosure Registry to search for a birth parent? Cases before the Supreme Court of Canada have been decided in less time.

ADR is charged with reuniting adoptees and birth families. On the surface, this seems laudable. But why does Ontario need to direct scarce financial resources from citizens' tax dollars to a registry anyway?

Searches are only initiated on behalf of an adoptee. There are more than 11,000 waiting for an ADR search in Ontario. With that waiting period, and many aging birth parents in their 70's and 80's, its not uncommon for adoptees to be informed that their parent had only recently died.

The MCSS minister, John Baird, is aware of this problem, as was his predecessor, Janet Ecker. The Ombudsman of Ontario reported in early 1999 that the waiting period was unreasonable and that the ministry "is unable to effectively enforce its mandate to conduct searches." To date, neither minister has been willing to seriously deal with this waiting list from hell.

What's the solution? In the short term, the minister needs to direct additional resources to slash the waiting list down to a reasonable period, say six months. But let's not stop there. If this government would only pass a law to make adoption records open to the adoptee, at the age of majority, then we would not need the register at all.

Opening up the system may sound extreme, but this has been the trend internationally for decades and partial steps have been made in British Columbia. Countries such as Australia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Norway, and Sweden already have laws making adoption records open.

So Minister Baird, now is the time to eliminate the waiting list from hell. The 11,000 adoptees on the registry list and several thousand more birth parents have waited long enough.

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Philip Burge is a social worker and an assistant professor with the department of psychiatry at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

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