Thank you. I will try to be brief.
As everyone here I'm sure is aware, in 2013 British Columbia updated its family law legislation and adopted the new Family Law Act, or FLA. The Family Law Act changed the law in B.C. by providing a consistent approach to the identification and assessment of family violence and created new duties for family dispute resolution professionals to assess for the presence of family violence. The reason I expect you're aware of this is that many of the ideas and the provisions in the FLA have influenced the amendments being proposed in Bill C-78, so that places those of us who work in B.C. in a unique position to comment on how these provisions are being interpreted and developed.
Unfortunately, our experience as family lawyers shows and research from B.C. confirms that, in many cases, despite the very positive legislative changes, judges are not, first of all, getting relevant information about family violence, which they're required by law to consider. Even where that information is available and judges find as a matter of fact that family violence has occurred, misinformation and stereotypes about family violence continue to influence outcomes of cases. While judges have been very receptive to applying an expanded definition of “family violence”, lawyers and judges continue to make a number of problematic assumptions about family violence.
For example, in some B.C. cases courts have continued to effectively read in a friendly parent rule and emphasize maximum contact, even though there was a deliberate decision in B.C. not to include those Divorce Act norms. This approach can and does end up privileging contact time at the expense of reviewing the best interests of the child and considering family violence, and in some cases, ends up ignoring the actual imperative in section 37 of the Family Law Act, which emphasizes that a child's safety is to be protected to the greatest extent possible.
We continue to see cases where judges assume that because a child was young when the family violence occurred, it will not affect them, despite the fact there is evidence that family violence can harm even infants and toddlers. We continue to see cases where it is assumed that abuse that is directed at one of the children's parents has little to do with overall parenting ability.
We continue to see an unwarranted optimism that violence ceases upon separation and that, in spite of a history of violence, it's appropriate to require victims of that violence to now work co-operatively with the abusive spouse, and that this can be done without risk. We continue to see myths about women's credibility, for example that credible women will disclose violence early, will report violence to the police, and will leave their relationship and not return, even though we know that it often takes women multiple attempts to leave abusive relationships.
The critical lesson to take from the B.C. experience is that to ensure the changes that are being made to the legislation have their intended effect, you must go further than simply directing courts to consider family violence.
First, we fully support the requirement that our colleague spoke about earlier, which is that family law professionals obtain mandatory training in the dynamics of family violence, including how to screen effectively for family violence.
I can promise you that understanding of and sensitivity to family violence did not crystalize in B.C. overnight when the Family Law Act came into effect. Lawyers do not, in my experience, have any special insight into the dynamics of family violence without some form of ongoing training. At our student clinic we regularly have women attend the clinic who tell us that their counsel didn't ask them about family violence and told them not to speak about family violence because it would be messy, would raise issues of credibility, and often they already have orders in place.
As you all know, to change a family law order often requires showing a material change in circumstance, so the decision not to disclose early can have very important implications on the ability to change that order later. Without mandatory education on family violence, the legal system will respond much more slowly, despite the best of intentions, including those provisions.
Second, we support the approach that was proposed by NAWL earlier tonight about including specific provisions in the family law act that would prohibit courts from making certain inferences about abused parents that are based on specific identifiable myths and stereotypes. You already have that brief. I'm not going to go through the various stereotypes and inferences they discussed. This approach does have a clear precedent in section 276 of the Criminal Code, which stipulates that evidence of prior sexual activity is not admissible to support the twin myths often found in sexual assault discourse. Those twin myths are that somebody who's had prior sexual relations is more likely to have consented and is less credible as a result. Those provisions have had a really important influence on the development of sexual assault law in Canada.
Like sexual assault, family violence is a practice of inequality and is one of the clearest expressions of discrimination against women in society. As in the Criminal Code, clear direction in family law acts and in amendments to the Divorce Act would have the effect of refocusing family law cases on evidence that is actually relevant to the material issues in the case and the outcomes, and supports equality of outcomes rather than allowing essentially misinformation and myths to distort the legal process. It would be incredibly helpful in ensuring that the provisions that everybody is working so hard to put in place are fully realized.