It was a happy ending for Shawnigan Lake’s Lisa Pyne-Mercier last week when she finally got word that she will be able to bring her great niece Ryleigh from South Africa to Canada to live with her.
But questions remain about why this process has taken so long and why it had to be so arduous in the first place.
Ryleigh’s mother died in 2021, and left custody of the girl to Pyne-Mercier. Ryleigh’s father, who lives in South Africa, gave up all of his parental rights to her, leaving her an orphan in the eyes of the South African government. She’s been living in foster care since her mother died.
But because her father is still alive, the Canadian government didn’t agree she’s an orphan and thus denied Pyne-Mercier’s bid to bring her to Cowichan to live.
Everyone agreed it was in Ryleigh’s best interests to move to Cowichan, where she would be taken care of by someone who loves her. Everyone except the Canadian bureaucracy.
From the beginning it was a bizarre finding and one that has served nobody in this situation, certainly not Ryleigh, who lost her mother and all sense of normalcy.
The minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has a great deal of latitude in such cases. We’re not supposed to be totally trapped by bureaucracy into paralysis. When that happens the bureaucracy we’ve created to serve us is no longer doing its job and needs at the least a serious overhaul. We should never be held prisoner to a system when the system descends into absurdity. It is vital that we have actual people who can exercise discretion, and that they do so in a timely manner when needed.
Why did this take three years to finally get to this point? Three years where a child’s life was left in limbo. It’s a question that may never be answered, but it should be. What about the next case that doesn’t fit neatly into the box?
This journey has cost Pyne-Mercier a great deal both in money and in emotional upheaval.
As for Ryleigh, it is heartbreaking to hear that she had so lost hope in the system in which she has been ensnared that she thought the adults around her were lying to her about coming to Canada. As if losing a parent isn’t one of the most devastating things that can happen to a child, then being thrown into this uncertainty has to have taken a further emotional toll. It would do so for any adult, let alone a grieving child.
So rather than closing this case as an unqualified success story, we hope instead the ministry will take it as an opportunity to learn to do better.