With adoptions on hold, Ontario parents worry children caught in 'red tape'

Adam Lozon and Scott Dufour are ready to become dads, but just when the couple had been matched with a child needing an adoption the process has been thrown into limbo due to flawed drug tests at a prominent Toronto hospital.

The Ontario government has ordered hundreds of adoption cases to stop moving forward while a judge reviews whether the children should have been put up for adoption in the first place. The issue stems from a flawed drug-testing program run by Motherisk, an organization based at the Hospital for Sick Children.

• Hundreds of Ontario adoptions on hold amid Motherisk drug-test scandal

• Hair drug test used in child-protection cases found 'unreliable'

Last Wednesday, Lozon and Dufour, who live in Stoney Creek, found out they were among the some 300 would-be Ontario families whose adoptions are being delayed indefinitely.

"It was kind of like a punch in the gut feeling," Lozon told CBC News.

"It's frustrating because you know on the other end of it there's a child waiting for you, there's a child that needs you and it just feels like we're caught up in a lot of red tape."

Tracy MacCharles, the Minister of Children and Youth Services, couldn't say how long families affected by the adoption freeze will have to wait.

Active adoptions are being "triaged and given priority for review," she said.

The government plans to review every adoption case to determine whether or not the child should have been taken into the case of the Children's Aid Society or not.

For Lozon and Dufour, the wait comes after the couple has had their home inspected and taken parenting classes. They've even been purchasing toys and books, all for their future child, for the past three years.

"We go away somewhere, we get a book and we write in the front of it ... that we were thinking of our child," Lozon said.

"There's nothing you can do, we're waiting for answers," Dufour said.