Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - January 2010
The Canadian Government announced this week an end to what had been called “Operation Stork” – the efforts to evacuate Haitian orphans whose Canadian adoptions were pending at the time of this month’s devastating earthquake.
Operation Stork was announced shortly after the earthquake, as one of several Canadian Government policy responses to the situation in Haiti. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney confirmed that the approximately 100 adoption cases which had been pending at the time would be expedited and the children moved to Canada as quickly as possible.
The efforts began with a flight arriving in Canada last Sunday, and were expected to wind down by the end of the week. Hundreds of volunteers, as well as cooperation from Air Canada, allowed for the evacuation to go fairly smoothly, once the initial hurdles were conquered.
At first, there were concerns over bureaucratic issues, because Haiti’s adoption records had been destroyed in the quake, and the judge who had been handling the cases did not survive. However, adoption powers were soon centralized to Haiti’s prime minister, who was then presented with Canada’s list of pending adoptions.
From there, it was a matter of scouting Haitian orphanages to locate the 154 children who had records of pending Canadian adoptions and then getting them safely into the country.
“The numbers [of children entering] should taper off after that because those are the bulk of the children for whom we have received approval from the provincial adoption agencies,” said Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
Haitian officials are wary of further expediting adoption procedures for children whose cases were not already pending, in hopes of preventing abuses and trafficking.
Source: Globe and Mail
