Adoptees fight for full information on birth families : Province lobbied to redraft legislation
Jodie Sinnema, The Edmonton Journal
July 8, 2001

Steve Perrault has been waiting 34 years to get something most of us are born with: a birth certificate.

When he was three months old, he was adopted in Alberta. Mark Adrian Nordin became Steve Perrault and his original birth certificate, with his original name and the names of his birth parents, was locked away because of a provincial law meant to give confidentiality to birth parents.

Growing up, Perrault struggled to understand why he had learning disabilities. His memory was sharp, but in a classroom filled with noisy children, his attention fell away and his marks dropped.

Nothing on his adoption record, which supplies only general information on birth parents such as eye colour and weight, indicated health concerns.

Nothing told him he had three siblings by the same mother.

Four years after he registered with the provincial governments' post-adoption registry Perrault finally found his first sister, who had also registered.

The registry is free and provides a passive way to search for family members. If two people from the same family register, and if both consent to exchange information, the government will connect them. If only one person registers, nothing is done to locate that person's relatives.

"It's a great feeling to have found a sister," Perrault says. He remembers driving up to Fort McMurray with his adoptive parents and seeing his newfound sister Sharon run out in stocking feet to embrace him in -35 C weather.

Five years later he located his mother with the help of a government-licensed search agency, which didn't exist until 1995. These agencies can access complete adoption records, but can't pass identifying information on until all parties agree.

Without Sharon's coverage under Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, she and Perrault would have had to pay about $375 to find Marg, their birth mother.

When Perrault met her, mysteries about his life were solved. His mother was an alcoholic and lived on the streets of Calgary. All of her children had fetal alcohol syndrome.

"To see her like that, it was hard," Perrault says, but he needed to know. And he says adoptees should have the right to complete information on their birth families.

The government still refuses to give him his birth certificate, even though Perrault has found all the information himself.

Perrault's sister, Lori Pringle, who was adopted by the same family but isn't his blood relative, filed a human rights complaint in 1999 so that she and all adoptees can get their birth certificates.

"It's my birth certificate," Pringle, 32, says from Calgary. "I should have every right to it."

Members of an adoption task force committee met with Children's Services Minister Iris Evans last month to urge her to draft a new adoption act.

Without the information, children don't know whether their parents got cancer. They can't donate kidneys to blood relatives. They don't know how much Cree is in their blood, so they can't access treaty rights.

If Perrault hadn't found his family, he wouldn't have known he had an ancestor who fought on the Plains of Abraham and an uncle who was the only surviving RCMP officer in the Frank Slide in southern Alberta.

People who don't want adoption records to be opened say confidentiality was promised to birth mothers. If a child phones a birth mother who never told her present family about the adoption, her life could be ruined.

But Ray Ensminger says such horror stories rarely come true. In his 23 years with his licensed search agency, Reunion Associates, he says few people have regretted finding their families or having their families find them.

He says those who most often oppose released records are adoptive parents, afraid they'll somehow lose their children.


ADOPTION RECORDS

1985 -- The post-adoption registry is set up in Alberta, linking family members if they register and agree to exchange information.

1995 -- The Child Welfare Act is changed to allow licensed search agencies to help adoptees find their birth families for a fee.

1995 -- Birth parents can now use the services of licensed search agencies to find children. The agencies have no access to the child's new surname.

1995 -- Alberta begins releasing the surnames of the birth parents to adoptees, but doesn't give the parents' full names.

1996 -- B.C. opens adoption records to adult adoptees. The new legislation includes a no-contact declaration and a veto to allow birth parents to ensure that their names won't be released.

1999 -- Newfoundland opens adoption records to adult adoptees.

2000 -- All children adopted in Alberta after 2000 will have full access to all of their adoption records, including birth certificates.

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