By Jacob Morgan | Link to Article
A legal battle that has kept a Saskatchewan family separated across continents could be nearing its end.
By Jacob Morgan | Link to Article
A legal battle that has kept a Saskatchewan family separated across continents could be nearing its end.
Social Services Minister June Draude stood alongside Ashfaq Afridi and lawyer Haidah Amirzadeh in Saskatoon on Thursday, June 5 to announce that the provincial government is certain that Ashfaq’s three-year-old adopted son, Ajjab, will be able to move from Pakistan to Saskatchewan.
“We have received additional information that allows us to sign the no-objection letter,” Draude said at a provincial cabinet office.
“The information will now go to the federal government.”
She added that she hopes to see the boy home within a few weeks.
Amirzadeh, who has represented the Afridis on a pro-bono basis, said Ashfaq’s wife Waheeda went to Pakistan for Ajjab when he was born and is overjoyed at the news.
“I have spoken to her for the past 2 1/2 years and she has cried many, many times,” Amirzadeh said.
“But today her cry was a good cry.”
One hurdle in the case, she said, was a perceived incompatibility between adoption procedures in Canada and an Islamic notion of guardianship in Pakistan.
To secure the required letter of non-objection supporting Ajjab’s bid to Ottawa for permanent residency, Amirzadeh said she had to provide a Pakistani expert “to clarify that the concept is the same.”
Ashfaq and Waheeda are Canadian citizens. They could not have children of their own and sought to adopt Ajjab following his birth in 2010 – before Canada halted adoptions from Pakistan last July – from Waheeda’s sister.
“She couldn’t afford to keep (her) seventh child,” Ashfaq explained. “For that reason, we stepped in.”
He has stayed in Canada to work during the ordeal and met his son for the first time in October on a trip to Turkey, where Waheeda and Ajjab had travelled to for respite from turmoil in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
“I was telling my son that he’s going to come one day,” Ashfaq said. “God accepted our prayer.”