A group of Ontario adoptees has filed a human rights complaint against Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian after she lobbied the province to amend its proposed adoption disclosure law with a clause allowing people to keep their records sealed.
The same complaint, filed separately by 16 adoptees over recent weeks with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, alleges that Ms. Cavoukian's public pleas for a so-called disclosure veto "intended to incite the infringement" of an adoptee's human rights to equal treatment regardless of family or marital status.
By calling for a veto, Ms. Cavoukian "is trying to say that we do not have an automatic right to our birth registration information," said Wendy Rowney of the Coalition for Open Adoption Records, an adoption support group helping adoptees file the complaint.
A disclosure veto would allow parents who gave up a child for adoption to block the release of the child's original birth certificate, which bears the child's name and possibly that of the parents. Adoptees would also be able to prevent the certificate's release.
That would create two classes of adoptees, said Ms. Rowney: those with access to their birth certificates and those without it.
"She is advocating for the government to discriminate against adoptees."
Ms. Cavoukian began calling aggressively for the veto after she received anguished anonymous letters from birth mothers who said they had been promised confidentiality in perpetuity and would consider suicide if they knew their secret might be revealed.
The government amended the legislation to allow birth parents or adoptees to ask a review board to veto the release of any identifying information, provided they could prove the risk of emotional or physical harm.
Ms. Cavoukian has said the change doesn't offer enough privacy protection.
The legislation already includes a contact veto, backed by a $50,000 fine. It would allow information to be disclosed but would give birth parents or adoptees the option of refusing all contact.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission "will neither confirm nor deny" it has received any complaints, which is a general policy, said communications manager Jeff Poirier.
Ms. Cavoukian, who hasn't received any official notification of the complaints, said it's her responsibility to comment on the privacy implications of any legislation and to ensure it strikes the proper balance.
"This is my job; it's not that I'm discriminating against anyone, it is a requirement that I must do this," she said.
"I see this complaint as an effort to silence my voice and perhaps frustrate me in the performance of my duties to both the public and the legislature."
In British Columbia, Alberta and Newfoundland, where adoption records are available, only about three to five per cent of adoptees and birth parents use the disclosure veto, while the rest have access - a balance Ms. Cavoukian called "respectful" and true to the Charter of Rights.
Access to birth records "is not an unqualified right," she said, adding she believes she has a responsibility to protect the privacy rights of those with no voice, such as the birth mothers who wrote the anonymous letters.
"How can you just say to one group, 'It must be so, the records must be opened?"'
Noreen Talbot, 50, one of the 16 adoptees who filed a complaint, said Ms. Cavoukian's warnings about the legislation suggested "all these horrific things would happen," while nothing has occurred in provinces where records have already been unsealed.
"To me she has implied that I am not entitled to my own personal information, I'm not entitled to know my ethnic background, I'm not entitled to know my history," Talbot said from Thunder Bay, Ont.
"It's a complete violation of everything that I can find under the Human Rights Code that says I'm entitled to - plus, even the United Nations says I'm entitled to it."
Adoptees fear Ms. Cavoukian's position has helped stall the proposed bill, which has been put over until the fall. The legislation marks the eighth attempt in just over a decade to unseal adoption records, and proponents want it passed.
Michelle Edmunds, a 42-year old complainant, accused Ms. Cavoukian of using "fear-mongering tactics" to push for a veto.
"We just went, 'enough is enough,' " Ms. Edmunds said. "We're human beings, we have rights, we don't deserve to be treated this way."