This should be an easy one. Why is the Canadian government making it so difficult?
Shawnigan Lake’s Lisa Pyne-Mercier has been fighting to bring her great niece Ryleigh, who is nine years old, from South Africa to live with her.
Ryleigh’s mom died in 2021, leaving custody of the girl to Pyne-Mercier in her will. Ryleigh’s father, who is still alive and living in South Africa, has relinquished all rights to his daughter and has stated she should be sent to Canada to live with her aunt. Ryleigh is thus living in foster care right now as the adults in the Canadian government continue to fail to get their act together — and continue to fail her.
Apparently, the sticking point is that while Ryleigh is considered an orphan by the South African government, because her father is still alive, the Canadian government disagrees, and does not consider Pyne-Mercier’s kinship to be close enough.
This is all just such nonsense and bureaucracy run amok.
Everybody besides some bureaucrats in Canada agree that it’s in Ryleigh’s best interests to live with Pyne-Mercier in Canada, including Ryleigh. And yet, here we are, stuck in limbo. The Government of Canada may indeed allow this farce to continue, forcing Pyne-Mercier to legally adopt Ryleigh, which could be a long, drawn-out and costly process that would fall on Pyne-Mercier’s shoulders. Wouldn’t we all rather she save that money for Ryleigh’s care?
Apparently, Sean Fraser, Canada’s minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has a lot of latitude in what he can do in such an unusual case, according to Cowichan/Malahat/Langford MP Alistair MacGregor, who is advocating for Ryleigh and Pyne-Mercier.
We think it’s clearly time for Fraser to step in, or direct his staff to cut the red tape binding a nine-year-old who’s lost her mom in a country without her family. Rules are all well and good, necessary even for the smooth functioning of a system that needs to be even-handed and fair.
But there also needs to be discretion to address unforeseen circumstances and rare cases that fall outside of the norm, as this case clearly does. That’s why we have people working for this ministry, not just computers screening files. Has a human being read through the whole file and all of the documents? Has Sean Fraser?
There’s no dangerous precedent to be set here. Just a young, traumatized girl to be reunited with a person who loves her.