Crown drops forgery and fraud charges against Ontario surrogate
A surrogate was accused of faking a receipt and forging a signature. The Ontario Provincial Police laid charges. The Crown withdrew them.
This is a story I am actively following, with identifying details removed.
4 minute read
A and B are a gay couple living in Ontario. When A's childhood friend, C, approached the couple about carrying a child for them, they were ecstatic — they had always wanted to be parents. C had been a surrogate twice already, but for her final go, she wanted to help out old friends. Her only ask was that they arrange it through a surrogacy agency she was associated with.
[Note: this is not the agency I highlighted in "Waiting Room." This is another agency.]
Even though the agency fee was steep, and they could have gone "indie" for free, the men agreed. This was despite the fact that A and B had ordinary jobs and were not exactly flush. They spoke with C about keeping costs down, and she said she understood.
By costs, they meant the specific pregnancy-related expenses that are allowed to be reimbursed under Canada's federal law. Surrogacy in Canada is legal, but it has to be an act of charity. The law forbids outright payment. Allowable reimbursable expenses include things like maternity clothes, travel expenses to and from appointments and additional food costs due to pregnancy.
A contract agreed on an amount that C's monthly expenses could not exceed, but A and B expected those generous caps would never be reached.
They were wrong. After C was confirmed pregnant, she began maxing out her expenses every month, the men told me. Groceries were sometimes north of $3,000. But she also included receipts for takeout several times a day. There were massages and Netflix and nail trimmings for the cat. C's daughter got paid to clean the kitty litter and do the laundry, her spouse got paid to clean the house, and grandmothers got paid for babysitting the grandkids — even the teenager, the men said, who ended up driving C to the hospital when she gave birth.
As you'll know if you read "Waiting Room," all of these are strategies commonly deployed by Canadian agencies, and the surrogates who work with them, to maximize the payout to surrogates. Not surprisingly, surrogates aren't thrilled about working for free. But intended parents like A and B are equally unhappy about feeling fleeced.
This sort of messy story is a common one in Canada. But a few things are not so common in the case of A and B and C. One is that A's mom is an accountant and she understands reimbursements, spreadsheets and over-billing. Another is that all the parties know each other and each other's communities: C got married in A's grandmother's back garden, for instance, and was best friends with A's sister. A had worked with C's spouse.
As it happens, A and B also knew C's ex mother-in-law, who had allegedly billed $75 to look after her grandson while C was out of town for a medical appointment. The men, who had reimbursed that $75 to C, took the receipt to where the ex mother-in-law worked and asked her if it was real. She was outraged. Not only had she not billed for the babysitting, she would never consider such a thing, she told them. C had forged her signature, she said. The ex mother-in-law wrote that down on the bottom of the receipt and signed it with her real signature. (Yes, I have a copy.) (Yes, I confirmed this with her.)
A and B and A's mom were convinced they were being cheated, so they refused to pay any more than the roughly $25,000 they'd already doled out.
Relations between the men and the surrogate broke down completely. The surrogate refused to allow the men to attend appointments. She accused them of making her bear the cost of their pregnancy — saying they had robbed her of her kid's education fund. She wasn't rich either, and worked for low pay. When the baby was about to be born — weeks early — she gave the men only an hour's notice, they say.
After the birth, things got even worse. C was considered under Ontario law to be the baby's legal mother, and she refused to sign over parentage until the outstanding money — several thousand dollars — was paid to her. The men refused. The baby spent eight days in hospital as lawyers representing the men, the surrogate and the hospital all duked it out. Finally, the men were allowed to take the baby home, but they still didn't have parentage.
Three-quarters of a year later, they still don't.
A few months after the birth, C offered to sign over parentage for just half of what she argued she was owed. The men refused. Their books showed that she owed them money, not the other way around. Meanwhile, the men said, C's lawyer ghosted theirs.
Without parentage, the men could not get their baby a health card, a birth certificate, or child benefits, nor were they technically eligible for parental leave or tax credits. They were fed up. So they took the ex mother-in-law's (allegedly) fake receipt to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
The OPP charged the surrogate with forgery and fraud. After being charged, she was no longer asking for the balance she said was owing, but asked instead that the men drop the charges and sign a release holding her harmless. They said no.
She was due to make a second court appearance earlier this month. I attended the session on Zoom. But instead, her lawyer informed the court that the Crown Prosecutor had withdrawn the charges, because they didn't have a "reasonable chance of conviction."
I get it. It looks like a tiny little crime. It's just $75. It looks like something you could almost do by accident.
But from what I can tell, fake receipts and forgeries are part of a systematic and widespread practice in Canadian surrogacy. They are one method Canadian surrogates are encouraged to use to get paid without technically getting paid.
I was hoping that a criminal conviction, even a little one like this, would bring a sliver of light onto this practice, and maybe, with luck, kickstart some scrutiny. I was wrong, as usual.