World Business Press Online, OTTAWA - Two luxury vehicles including a $50,000 Lexus, a horse for $3,000, a saddle for another $2,700, a $13,000 weeklong hotel stay in New York, two trips to Disney World Land, etc.  An Ontario company specializing in international adoptions bought all this stuff for the use of the firm. In documents one can find, for example, a bill for a renovation of the house of the executive director of the company.

The Kids Link International Adoption Agency, which runs Imagine Adoption, based in Cambridge, Ont., posted a bankruptcy notice on its website and went into receivership this week.  The rest of the society, including people from both the provincial and federal governments, started to ask who was the horse and the saddle for, who spend few days in the company of Disney's little characters, or in Big Apple. We can just guess now, but we could be interested in a bit earlier, couldn't we?

Maybe it would be enough if someone from 400 prospective Canadian parents, interested in international adoption, were interested more in who had pocketed their money. One doesn't have to be a parent to understand all the terms and conditions they had to fulfill to finally be called mother or father. Yes, maybe they could ask for an adoption here in Canada, not to try save the world somewhere in Africa and they could be happy with their children now... but...

People are people no matter where they are. That is why it felt good to learn that nearly 200 creditors unanimously agreed to forget their financial claims and instead try to revive the agency again and complete hundreds of pending adoptions. They will try to bring the company back under a new group of directors.  

Which brings back the question of oversight. And perhaps another one on whether the provincial and/or federal governments couldn't do more after the agency declared bankruptcy. Saving the adoption business and saving, for example, General Motors few months ago, are probably two different things. But while many say that saving GM was important for the economy and the employees, others could argue that helping those whose dreams of setting up a family are about to be broken because of mismanagement are worth of governments' attention as well. Not to speak about kids who were about to be brought to Canada. Adoption, even through an agency with dubious purchases, was not like investing on stock market and suffering losses when the economy tanks. Making profit was not the reason. They put children over gold.

Miroslava Hospodarova