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House Hansard - 219

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 18, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 219 - Sep/18/23
Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)
Mr. Speaker, I would like to start out by congratulating Adopt4Life, the Child and Youth Permanency Council of Canada and the time to attach campaign for their tireless advocacy, which has led to Bill C-318 today. I also congratulate my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster for putting this bill forward. It is an important first step in providing adoptive parents with the parental time they need to attach to adoptive children. This is a critical first step in improving the outcomes for children being adopted, many of whom are over the age of 10 at the time of placement and have a history of trauma and loss. I, along with my NDP colleagues, support this change as we recognize that building relationships between children and adoptive families is vital for the success, not only of the child, but also for the adoptive family. The first year that children are with their adoptive parents or caregivers is crucial for bonding and creating a foundation for strong relationships. The extension of this parental leave is crucial. Unfortunately, one of the areas where this bill falls short is the recognition of kinship and customary care arrangements. This is strongly supported by Adopt4Life and Time to Attach campaign, which are also fighting for an additional 15-week leave for children who are receiving customary and kinship care. The province of Manitoba defines “kinship care” as an arrangement in which the child is placed with extended family, such as a grandparent or someone with whom they have a significant relationship. Simcoe Muskoka Family Connexions defines “customary care” as care through an individual's lifespan in which the community takes care of its own members according to its customs, traditions and norms. Both kinship and customary care arrangements are common within indigenous nations as we struggle to reclaim our families and children. This is a serious omission in the bill that needs to be addressed, especially because, in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 90% of all children in care are indigenous. There are more children in the child welfare system today than at the height of the residential school system. We know the harmful implications of separating children from their families and communities. One only has to look at the impacts of residential schools, where children were forcibly removed from their families and shipped off to residential schools, and at the sixties scoop, where indigenous children were removed from customary care structures and placed in non-indigenous foster homes, disconnecting them from their familial and community structures, to see the lasting damage that has caused. In both instances, physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse were rampant. This has resulted in lasting trauma and loss for individuals, families and communities. This was acknowledged in the 2015 report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Moreover, the omission of customary and kinship care is contrary to our international obligations, including UNDRIP and Bill C-15, which is now a law in Canada. It is also in violation of article II of the UN convention on genocide. I want to share a story about my mother. My mother, Marjorie Gazan, was a street kid and a child welfare survivor who ended up in the system after my grandmother abandoned her and her younger brother in a hotel room in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, when she was five years old. My grandmother had to leave them to earn money. There were no supports for indigenous women in the 1930s. There were no human rights. There was no one to turn to, especially for indigenous single mothers, and my grandmother was not an exception. Since my mother was the eldest child, my grandmother left her in charge of her younger brother with specific instructions. She said, “Here is a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jam. It needs to last five days.” I remember my mother telling me how she, along with my uncle, gleefully ate the loaf of bread and ran out of their food ration in only one day. Hungry, scared and alone, my mother decided to call the Children's Aid Society. It is beyond most people's imagination, especially those who have been privileged with human rights, what a five-year-old girl would have to have endured to understand who to call and how to work with the bureaucratic child welfare system to relieve her and her brother's hunger. It was not that my grandmother did not love her, but she had grown up as a street kid, who later in life became a serious alcoholic to deal with the violent genocide she had experienced throughout her life. Dislocated from her family for reasons directly correlated to the Indian Act and other institutional and colonial disruptions, including residential schools, she did not have anyone or anywhere to turn to. In fact, under the former Indian Act, a “person” is defined as “any individual other than an Indian”. This made it impossible for my grandmother. When my mother and uncle were apprehended into care, my late great auntie Stella Goodwill offered to take them into her house on Standing Buffalo reservation. However, this did not occur. As a result, my mother ended up being switched between 15 different placements between the ages of five and 18. It was not until I was 13 years old that my mother reconnected with her family and her community of Wood Mountain Lakota first nation. My mother had to endure a life alone in the world, and as a result, I was brought up almost completely devoid of extended family. I often envied my friends having big family dinners with their relatives. This was robbed from our family by the child welfare system and residential schools, as well as the intergenerational impacts of institutionalization, colonialism and systemic racism. I sometimes wonder why I was brought to the House of Commons, an often racist, misogynistic, classist and neocolonial environment, where talk of reconciliation is cheap and the discomfort demonstrated when the residue of trauma caused by colonial violence rears its head is received with assumptions and judgments. Maybe that is why I am here, to tell these stories, to speak these truths so that they will forever be recorded in the Hansard, to fight for justice for families and communities, and to bring our children and women home. Customary and kinship care is one way to achieve this. Although the NDP will be supporting this bill, it is my hope that extending the benefits to customary and kinship caregivers will be addressed at committee to truly reflect reconciliation.
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Context: House Hansard - 219 - Sep/18/23
Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)
Mr. Speaker, I first want to welcome you and all my colleagues from every party back to the House. I rise today on Bill C-318, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Canada Labour Code, regarding a very specific topic: adoptive and intended parents. The Liberal government has demonstrated a severe lack of leadership on that file. As a quick explanation for those who might not be familiar with the bill on this first sitting day after the summer break, it introduces a new type of special EI benefits, specifically, an attachment benefit of 15 weeks for adoptive parents and parents of children conceived through surrogacy. The bill would also amend the Canada Labour Code to extend parental leave accordingly. It would also extend the benefit period while the child is hospitalized. I do not think anyone here in this House is questioning the need for a parent to take time off work to properly welcome a new baby home. Whether we have children of our own or not, we all know that the arrival of a new child in a home is an intense and challenging time: cries, tears, nightmares, anxiety, colic pain, possible health or feeding issues, and so on. I see members smiling. We have all been there. We have to remove from the house everything that can possibly be dangerous for the little one and arrange the space so as to maximize the baby's mental and physical development. An important part of being a parent is creating that special bond with the child. Parents have to make sure that their kids are happy, that they have everything they need, and that they feel safe and can develop trusting relationships with their new family. There is no question that all new parents go through a complex adjustment period that is full of challenges and is different for each child. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there is no manual or piece of legislation that can really prepare us for that. Believe me, I too have been through it. However, there are measures the government can put in place to make things a little easier and give new parents the tools they need—and I do mean all new parents. As it is often said, adoptive parents do not have it any easier than biological parents. In fact, the opposite is often true, and this relates to the notion of attachment mentioned in the summary of Bill C-318. The literature indicates that the attachment theory referred to earlier by my colleague has emerged as a decisive factor in determining the best interests of the child. John Bowlby's theory highlighted the fact that, from birth, children turn to adults for protection. The elements of attachment theory are based on the need for stability, consistency and adequate basic care in terms of both quantity and quality. Forming attachments is essential to children's long-term psychological health. That said, in the case of adoption or surrogacy, the process of forming attachments can be tricky because there is no biological connection. The relationship needs to be developed, and that takes time. It is worth noting that the meeting between parents and child often involves long-distance travel in different time zones, fatigue and changes of culture, language and climate. The children themselves obviously do not share the same excitement as their new parents. They have to say goodbye to the places they know and to everyone who has cared for them since they were born, people they have formed bonds with. The impact of the overall decline in international adoption must also be factored in. I say this because it is increasingly difficult to adopt young children here in Canada. The process takes longer and is more complex than it used to be. As for parents adopting a child conceived through surrogacy, certain factors may differ, but the challenges of creating a bond are quite similar. They need enough time with their child to foster attachment and create a strong, lasting parenting bond. I would also like to remind the House that, currently, neither the Canadian nor the Quebec maternity and parental leave plans contain an attachment benefit as proposed in the current bill. Considering all this, the Bloc Québécois obviously and firmly supports creating a 15-week attachment benefit—yes, 15 weeks—for adoptive parents and parents of children conceived through surrogacy. This is not an onerous measure. I therefore invite my colleagues to vote with the Bloc Québécois in support of Bill C‑318. However, what is somewhat disappointing to the Bloc Québécois right now is the Liberals' lack of leadership in the whole EI file overall. Need I remind the House that two years ago, in 2021, the Liberal Party campaigned on the promise to modernize employment insurance? It promised to extend the system to cover self-employed workers and to address the shortcomings brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we are now in September 2023 and, based on the Liberals' last budget, we can see that there is still nothing. Nothing has been done except for two small reforms, if we can call them that. We are far from the major structural changes that were promised to Canadians and Quebeckers. What guarantee do we have that this bill, even if it is passed, will be implemented by the Liberals? As my colleague was saying, the Liberals need to walk the talk. The talk does not seem to be a problem, but the walk is not getting us very far. In closing, I invite my colleagues yet again to vote with the Bloc, and me, of course, in favour of Bill C‑318. This could help many families in dire need. I thank my colleagues for listening and I wish them a good return to Parliament.
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