Personal Saga Behind MPP’s Bill on Adopted Children
Ian Urquart, Provincial affairs columnist, The Toronto Star
December 8, 1998

Mostly, the politics at Queen’s Park is, well, political. Positions are taken and postures struck to maximize political advantage. But occasionally, politics can be personal, as with Marilyn Churley’s private member’s bill to help adopted children find their birth parents, which is to be debated later this week.

Churley, the NDP MPP for Riverdale, is a feisty veteran of eight years as minister of consumer and commercial relations in Bob Rae’s government. She is a poised and aggressive critic of the Harris government on issues ranging from the environment to violence against women.

But 30 years ago, she was a frightened and pregnant teenager. Too overcome with guilt and shame to tell her own parents, she gave birth alone and immediately surrendered her son for adoption.

“After he was born, I cried for months,” Churley wrote in an article last year in The Star. “I looked for him on every street corner as the years went by. I had my private ceremonies: on his birthdays, I would light a candle for him. For 28 years, I was among the walking wounded. I never stopped loving him and grieving for him.”

Eventually, Churley went through channels to try and find him. But the system in Ontario is excruciatingly slow. Both birth parent and child have to register with the Ministry of Community and Social Services and then wait while ministry officials try to match them up.

As Ontario Ombudsman Roberta Jamieson reported earlier this year, the ministry is under staffed, the adoption disclosure registry has more than 16,000 names, and the wait for a match-up is more than seven years in most cases.

Churley wasn’t prepared to wait that long. She hired an investigator to track her son down. It took more than a year, but he was finally located and a happy reunion arranged.

To encourage similar reunions, Churley has brought forward a private member’s bill that would give every adopted child aged 18 or over identifying information on his or her birth parents upon application.

If a birth parent did not want to be contacted, they would have to notify the registry, and a copy of the notice would be attached to the information given to the applicant. If the applicant persisted and contacted the parents anyway, he or she would be subjected to a fine of up to $5,000.

This last part troubles Churley, who would prefer to grant adopted children an unfettered right to track down their birth parents. “I think it’s every child’s human right to know who they are,” she says. But she inserted the penalty clause as a concession to try to win enough support to get her bill through the Legislature.

It won’t be an easy fight. First of all, private member’s bills have a low priority in any Legislature and, no matter how worthy, must compete for limited time in order to survive.

Secondly, there are specific forces arrayed against Churley’s bill, as was apparent four years ago, when Tony Martin, NDP MPP for Sault Ste. Marie, introduced similar legislation. His bill got right up to the final stage before it died.

Churley believes opposition to change stems from two sources:

A well-intentioned, but misguided, concern for the adoptive parents. “There’s a sense that it is not fair to them,” she says. “They adopted the child in good faith that they could raise it as their own.” However, Churley argues, where children have already located their birth parents (as in her case), their relationship with their adoptive parents has not been diminished.

“Old-fashioned family values” that would deny the birth parent any pleasure from a reunion. “It’s almost (as if) she deserves to be punished.” says Churley. “She made her bed, so to speak, now she has to lie in it.”

But with a little personal diplomacy, Churley hopes to overcome such opposition by Thursday, when her bill is scheduled for debate. Among others, she plans to approach Janet Ecker, minister of community and social services. The best-case scenario would be for Ecker to incorporate Churley’s bill in government legislation, thereby ensuring its passage. At the very least, Churley hopes Ecker won’t stand in the way of her bill.

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