Presuming the alleged facts are as reported and as set out in the Statement of Claim, this will be a most interesting case to follow, as reported in The Toronto Star:
Romanian-born Alexandra Austin, who was adopted by an Ontario couple but sent back five months later to poverty and deprivation, has launched a $7 million lawsuit against her adoptive parents, the Canadian and Ontario governments and Swiss International Air Lines…[A]fter five months in the Austins’ Ancaster home, Alexandra was driven to the airport and put on a plane for return to Bucharest. Shortly afterward, the Austins adopted a Romanian baby girl…Canada had accepted her as a landed immigrant when the adoption was approved. But as she left the country before her adoptive parents filed a citizenship application, she never became Canadian.
The parents who adopted her are no longer in Canada, this person and her child are effectively stateless and Canada should be ashamed. How could such a thing occur? It is interesting that no reference to this case I have read, including the link above to the Star‘s full article, references the Criminal Code section that pops immediately into my mind and might have had similar wording at the time the one-way ticket to no one bought and used:
215. (1) Every one is under a legal duty
(a) as a parent, foster parent, guardian or head of a family, to provide necessaries of life for a child under the age of sixteen years…
(2) Every one commits an offence who, being under a legal duty within the meaning of subsection (1), fails without lawful excuse, the proof of which lies on him, to perform that duty, if
(a) with respect to a duty imposed by paragraph (1)(a) or (b),
(i) the person to whom the duty is owed is in destitute or necessitous circumstances…
218. Every one who unlawfully abandons or exposes a child who is under the age of ten years, so that its life is or is likely to be endangered or its health is or is likely to be permanently injured, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years…
I hope this sad case finds this person some meaningful remedy. Fortunately we have courts that allow for redress where these parents, these bureaucrats and all other adults involved failed if the facts prove out – but how could they not given she was nine?