Thanks for the chance to speak to the committee.
I'm appearing as someone who has practised and taught family law for—I hesitate to say it—almost 40 years. I teach family law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
I understand you don't have my written brief yet, but I want to emphasize, following what Professor Kruk said, that in the brief you will actually see the research. I've given you some citations in my eight-page brief on that.
In general, I'm supportive of Bill C-78. I think it's fair to say that, if anything, it's overdue.
With the time I have, I want to focus on three points about relocation. It's one of my areas of research over many years.
I come from the province of Nova Scotia, which has in fact passed legislation on relocation that looks very much like the proposals in Bill C-78. We've had it in place since 2017. It's early days, but I think it has been fairly successful so far. B.C. also passed provincial family legislation involving relocation, which came into effect in 2013—less successfully, I think it's fair to say.
Here are my three points, and without the brief, I'm going to try to be as pointed as I can.
First, the relocation burdens in proposed section 16.93, which have been talked about already, would provide important guidance to parents, lawyers, mediators and courts that is desperately needed. I think there is general, broad support for bringing some order in this area of law. It's a critical part of the bill. I'll explain the underlying rationale.
Second, there is a minor tweak I'm going to suggest in the section on mandatory notice of relocation and also the other two kinds of mandatory notices in the exception. I'll be brief on that.
Third, generally speaking, the added best interest factors on relocation, including the reasons for the move, I think are helpful and clear. It's similar to what we did in Nova Scotia. There is a proposed subsection 16.92(2), and I'm going to tell you why I think it should be deleted.
At the heart of the relocation part are the burdens that are set out in proposed section 16.93.
As little bit of backdrop, back in 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada decided a case called Gordon v. Goertz, which has already been referred to today. It's fair to say that the decision gave very little guidance on how to deal with relocation cases. It has led to case-by-case decision-making. I think it has actually encouraged litigation. It's been heavily criticized. It's important at this point in time to bring some structure and guidance to the difficult decisions on relocation where the court did not.
The court has had 21 opportunities since 1996 to give leave to a case involving relocation to reconsider Gordon v. Goertz, and they've turned them down every time. My point is that it's a matter for legislation. The courts aren't going to change that.
The starting point is burdens of proof about what's in a child's best interest at the relocation stage. I think the three-way split that is set out in that section is consistent with what social science and empirical studies can tell us. I think it's important to say what we know and what we don't know about how relocation affects children, hence the three different categories.
There are three categories in that section on burdens that are built around the care arrangements already established under agreement or court order. It's a fairly sophisticated attempt to give some guidance and to reduce litigation.
The first says that when the child spends “substantially equal time in the care of each party”, the burden of proving that a move is in the child's best interest is upon the parent proposing to move. That's the first one.
You might ask why. The answer is that when you have both parents actively involved in that substantially equal way, the child can stay with the remaining parent and gain the advantages of continuity of care, community, schools, day care, friends and family. That burden can be met by someone proving, to the contrary, that in fact the move is in the child's best interests. It's important not to treat this like a rule. It's just a starting point.
By the way, in practice, right now, in cases where there is substantially equal parenting, it's relatively rare that moves are permitted. It's fair to say that 70-75% of the moves are refused in these cases. I think it's fair to say that the ones where moves are allowed are the unusual cases. In typical cases, the answer is no; the children don't get to move.
Second, at the other end of the spectrum under that section, where one parent has the care of the child for the vast majority of the time, it would be up to the parent opposing the move to prove that a move would not be in the child's best interest. We assume as a starting point, and I'd say rightly, again, that continuity of care with a predominant primary caregiving parent the vast majority of the time is going to be critical to the child's well-being in the future.
By the way, in existing case law in Canada, in cases such as this, where someone has the vast majority of the time, courts allow moves in about 90% of the cases already, so this is reflecting also what's happening before the courts.
I'll give you some examples in this category. We have cases where a remaining parent, for example, cannot offer a viable alternative as the primary care parent if the other parent moves. We also have a fair number of cases—I want to mention this—of young mothers, because that's what they are, coming to Canada with a Canadian father. They'd met overseas, and then they split up. She has no family here. She can't speak the language and is often unable to find employment. She has a young child and applies to move back home. That's someone who has the bulk of the time, “the vast majority” as the language says. Those are a couple of examples.
In between those two, what the legislation proposes to do is add a third category that says that both parents have the burden of proof when they don't fall in either end, in one or the other, because quite frankly, we don't know enough about that category of cases to say that we have a sensible starting point. We just don't know, so we have to accept the limits of our knowledge at the present time.
That's quite a mix of cases. The ones in the middle are cases where people have been shifting their care arrangements, cases where people have lessened “the vast majority” or fall slightly short of “substantially equal”. It's a mixed bag, and it's very hard to tell what's in the best interests of the child in those cases, hence no assumption either way.
By the way, those two extremes, “the vast majority” and “substantially equal”, would account for about 65% to 75% of the relocation cases, where you can give helpful guidance to people who are out there trying to sort out their lives.
In Nova Scotia, we've had this three-way split in effect only since May 2017. It's interesting. Our courts have had no great difficulty sorting out who falls in which of those three categories. If anything, I'd say Bill C-78 is probably easier to administer than what we have in Nova Scotia.
These burdens would make a big difference. It would help resolve cases and remove some, but not all, of the uncertainty.
That's the first point, and I'm keeping an eye on my time.
My second point is on mandatory notice of relocation. One thing I want to mention is the 60 days' written notice to the other parent of the intended move. There's an exception that you can be exempted or have that modified, and there's a specific identification of a risk of family violence as a case. One thing that should be made clear, and it isn't—and on page 4 of my brief I actually suggest the wording—is that when you're applying to exempt yourself from the requirement to give notice, it should be possible to make that application without giving notice. I think that's the intention of the section, but it should be made clear that the application can be made without notice to the other party—for example, in a family violence setting. This is just to leave no doubt.
I hope I have enough time here. The last point I want to make is about the so-called double-bind question. There's a list of relocation factors that it says you can look at for the reasons for the move, and you can look at some others, but there's a provision in there that says:
the court shall not consider whether the person who intends to relocate...would relocate without the child if the child's relocation was prohibited.
It's what we call the double-bind question. That provision comes from the B.C. act, and it has caused a lot of difficulty in that province. We in Nova Scotia said we didn't want to get into this; we didn't include it.
Here's the double-bind question. You ask the parent seeking to move, “Will you move without your child?” What do you think the answer is going to be in most cases? It would be “No.” Some people have said the question is unfair and doesn't give us any probative information. That's the thing about the double bind. If you say, “Yes, I am going”, what's the implication of that? “I'm more important.”
The important thing to remember here is that courts can't tell parents where to live. Courts can only tell whether the children can move or not. Courts can't order parents to move or not to move, so the parent's intentions are important.
The other thing worth remembering is that 90% to 95% of the parents proposing to relocate are women, so the question falls upon them.
Think about the difficulty here. The fear that's underlying that question, or the answer to that question, is that if the parent says, “No, I'm not going to move without my kids”, that obviously means the move isn't so important, and there's a tendency for the courts to default to the status quo—that is, not to allow the move.
The difficulty here is that, if you think about it, that's a question for the parent proposing the move. Can you ask the parent who is not moving if they would move to the new location to be with their kids? Is that a fair question? This legislation doesn't stop that. Many parents will volunteer that they won't move without their kids. Does that mean you have to ignore that answer? It says, “shall not consider”.
I'll give one last example and then I'll stop. If you have a situation where, let's say, mom proposes to move from Ottawa to Calgary where her new partner is located, under our approach right now in Canada we say to the new partner, why can't you move from Calgary to Ottawa? That's a question we allow to be asked. It's an important question, because sometimes it can avoid the conflict. Can we ask that question? The answer is yes. We can even ask grandparents whether or not they intend to move with the grandchild. As a grandparent, how would you answer that question?
The reason I'm emphasizing this is that the provision says.... I know it's awkward to give that answer, but sometimes it may give the court important information about what the realistic options are. Leaving that provision in means that the court can't consider the answer to that question, when the answer to that question may be really important in knowing what the best option for the child is.
I'll stop there. I have other stuff, but it's in my brief.
