Advocacy

I'm an Ontario adoptee, and when I applied for my own adoption records, I didn't have to pay a fee because Ontario doesn't charge one. And even then, the process was hard. There's the bureaucracy itself, but there's also everything underneath it: the weight of deciding to apply in the first place, the waiting once you have, and then living with whatever the file does or doesn't tell you, for the rest of your life. Knowing that, I've always been quietly grateful that money, at least, was never one more thing standing in my way.

Not everyone gets that. For a time, I was one of the main points of contact for adoption information in BC. People would call or email me, searching for their own records, and tell me they didn't have $50 to spare. I had mine for free. They couldn't afford theirs. That gap never sat right with me; it still doesn't. No one should have to pay to know who they are.

In British Columbia, adoptees are charged $50 just to request the records that explain who they are: their original/first/birth family, their medical history, their origins. For many of us, that fee is one more gatekeeper between an adoptee and the truth about themselves, at a moment that's already emotionally loaded enough.

This isn't a fringe position. West Coast LEAF, the Former Youth in Care Community of Practice, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and Pivot Legal Society have all stood behind our call to eliminate this fee because identity shouldn't come with a price tag.

My graduate research looked closely at what it means for adoptees to get their records, and I found that access isn't black and white. It can heal, and it can also hurt. Everyone’s experience is unique. Records aren't neutral documents; they're written by someone, at some point, often in language that moralizes or stigmatizes, and what's left out of a file can say as much as what's in it. I believe adoptees deserve access to their own information, and I also believe they deserve to go into the experience with open eyes about what that information actually is.

I invite you to explore this page further and join me in advocating to eliminate the $50 fee to access adoption records in so-called British Columbia.

— Marko A., Founder & Executive Director, Free the Adoptee