For every New York, Oregon, and Hawaii there is a Prince Edward Island.
On Wednesday, November 20, Bill No 29 was introduced in the PEI Unicam. The proposed law pathologizes adoptees and criminalizes contact.
A second reading was held tonight. We initially believed there was a third reading and that the bill had passed, but that is not true.
According to Marisa Cooper, of BN Partner Canada Open Records, this bill is on the silver bullet track and we can expect action soon.
Usually, a bill is introduced and it goes to committee. It’s debated at committee and the proceedings are public. This was introduced yesterday, second reading and a pitiful non-discussion that I won’t call a debate. Te bill will ption legislationprobably have a third reading very soon.
If it saves just one!
If you think your state or province is bad, try this on for size. The bill contains the following provisions:
- disclosure veto
- criminally enforceable contact veto with a threat of a $5,000 fine and 1-year jail term
- prohibits adoptees from “publishing any identifying information about the person who provided the content preference.”
To add insult to insult. the law will not allow the release of the original birth certificate but “sends “prescribed information” from the birth record to the PEI adoption boss and then the adoption boss controls the release of that “prescribed information” if there are no objections.
Why?
Where did this nonsense come from?
The bill comes with a 143-page report written by a committee of provincial (in more than one way) adoptacrats. over a period of 18 months. No adoptees much less those with adoptee rights creds, were invited to the table. (page 10). I haven’t been able to read the report tonight, but will probably slog through it tomorrow. Page 47 of the report,, however., explains the rationale for protecting PEI from ax-wielding, porch pissing, social media blabbering Bastards
The Advisory Committee was told a story of one birth mother whose identity was uncovered by their adult child by making an appeal on social media. This person expressed how unsettling the experience was. The birth mother’s identity was publicly revealed on social media, and in a rural PEI town this meant that the news would quickly spread among neighbours, and more importantly to the family. With children who had not known they had an older half-sibling who had been adopted, the birth mother had mere hours to prepare herself to share the news with her family.
So one person’s “bad experience” (mainly self-created) dictates the legal treatment of PEI’s Class Bastard. What other ways can the PEI government find to protect its citizens from misspent youth or bad personal decisions?
The report contains some nifty powerpoint charts. I had trouble making a copy of this one, so I am typing it up here. It took the committee 18 months to come up with reasons adoptees could want their OBC. In all that time it never occurred to anybody that adoptees have a right to their government-held birth records. (assuming that rights are a thing in PEI and Canada.), Our OBCs are ours!
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MOTIVATION for Adopted People
Some examples
- Curiosity
- Health Issues–a need to know their genetic history for themselves or their children
- Identity/Self-understanding
- Connection
- “Missing Pieces”–“I feel like a part of me is missing”
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We still have time to stop this bill. Marisa says “We need boots on the roundn now!”
The Canada Open Records Action Alert with contact information is on the group’s Facebook page, We will post it on the BN webpage shortly.
Also see: Meanwhile, a Few Canadians Didn’t Get the Memo Greg Luce, Adoptee Rights Law Center