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Try this one on for size: You are a solid, middle-class couple that has been trying to adopt since 2008. It hasn't worked out. But then, an opportunity presents itself to become foster parents to an aboriginal baby. You say yes.

The child is of Métis heritage – one that you, the foster mom, share. You provide the child with an almost idyllic existence in a pretty seashore town on Vancouver Island. In the course of feeding her and changing her and taking her for walks in her stroller and rocking her to sleep, the child begins to feel every bit like your own.

Then one day, the Ministry of Children and Family Development calls to inform you it is going to take the child away and move her to a foster home in Ontario, where she has siblings and important biological bonds. You can imagine. Or maybe you can't.

That is the essence of a case that has landed in the B.C. Court of Appeal, where the foster couple is trying to block the ministry from moving the now 2 1/2-year-old girl. Last week, a B.C. Supreme Court judge dismissed the couple's petition to stop the move. However, Justice Mary Newbury, who is hearing the appeal, sounds far more sympathetic to the couple's plight, questioning why anyone would want to cruelly uproot the child when her home environment "seems perfect."

Hear, hear.

Let's hope common sense prevails here because the ministry is about to make what could be a disastrous decision. I understand the imperative to keep aboriginal children together whenever possible. But it can't be a goal that supersedes good judgment. The foster parents in Ontario are not aboriginal. The child has never met the two younger full siblings living in the house; two older half siblings are also there, but they are young adults who may not be in the home for much longer.

In other words, the child, who can't be named by law, has no attachment to her family members living in the hardscrabble Ontario neighbourhood to which she would be moving.

In the meantime, she does have a very strong attachment to the two foster parents who have raised her since she was a baby.

I talked to Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond about the case. Because the matter is before the courts, she needs to be somewhat circumspect, but it wasn't hard to discern in her words which way she leans.

"We have to keep the best interests of the child at the forefront above all else," B.C.'s children's watchdog told me. "You can't have a fantasy that the overriding priority is that the kids need to stay together regardless of the circumstances. The reality is, aboriginal children are often spread out. Are you going to scoop everyone up and put them in one place?

"The biological mom could have more children, we don't know. What then? The truth is, it's possible this little girl could still have a relationship with her siblings without moving there. That is a real possibility."

It is. And it should be the path that is sought here. By every account, this child is in a very good spot currently, in a province with the highest educational outcomes among aboriginal children in the country. She is with a couple that would adopt her if foster parents were allowed to adopt, something that is forbidden in this province.

(And that is a policy that needs to be changed, too. Alberta fixed it years ago because, well, the notion that foster parents should be restricted from adopting, under any circumstances, makes no sense.)

I understand that the ministry must consider the child's aboriginal identity and what is the best way for it to be supported and protected – in this case, with her siblings or with her B.C. foster parents? Given that the foster mom shares the child's Métis heritage, you can make the case that the girl's aboriginal identity will be nurtured and guarded. You can also argue that the child has grown accustomed to her current environment, which is, by all accounts, an extremely healthy one.

Without a doubt, it would give the girl the best chance to succeed.

That is the best option here.

Justice Newbury has reserved her decision. If her musings in court are any indication, she could be preparing to overturn the lower court's ruling. If there is any justice in this world, that's exactly what will happen. Ripping that child away from her foster parents would be unbearable to watch.

But then again, those who originally made the decision wouldn't have to watch.

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