Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Good. Thank you.
My question is for Ms. Bayes, to start with.
Would you say that the requirement for giving notice in cases of relocation perpetuates women—particularly low-income women—in circumstances of violence and prevents them from getting out of those circumstances?
6:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver
I would.
In B.C., you are able to leave. The other party doesn't have to be present. You can leave and then go to court to make that attestation. I think that's important, particularly for low-income women. They are often very fearful of the state and of their children being apprehended. I've heard many women say that they are concerned about having endured these relationships and exposed their child to domestic violence because if they continue to do so, that's grounds for the ministry to come and apprehend their children. They feel caught in a situation where they don't have the resources to leave, but they understand that their child may be apprehended from them because they're not protecting their child from exposure to violence—either to the child themselves or to the parent.
Every provincial legislation across the country is constructed that way. I think it is important to allow women the opportunity to leave, to flee, to protect themselves and their child, and then to make that statement.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
You also made a comment about mandatory screening for violence. I believe you indicated that for low-income women, it was difficult for them to get access to those kinds of services. Is that what you said, and if that's the case, would you suggest that those kinds of services should be available from the court as a sort of court-supplied friend of the court kind of thing?
6:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver
The Family Law Act for B.C. provides that staff are trained and able to do those screenings. Elizabeth Fry Society has provided that training for the ministry for children and families, to enable them to do that screening as well. We have a particular expertise there. This act, however, does not set out that staff would be trained, and we would hold that they should be trained, similarly to that. The B.C. legislation is very explicit that people have to have that training in order to do this work and to understand the context of what they're seeing because, otherwise, you just think you're faced with somebody who's difficult.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Thank you. I'm going to switch to Dr. Fabricius now.
Dr. Fabricius, I believe I heard you say that Arizona did not implement in their law a presumption of equal parenting. They implemented a maximum contact approach. Is that what you said?
6:30 p.m.
Prof. William Fabricius
Yes. The wording of the law said that the court shall maximize the parenting time between both parents, and we defined children's best interests as frequent, substantial, meaningful and continuing parenting time. We found that the courts are implementing it, and they're implementing it as a presumption for equal parenting time. Most of the attorneys and judges agree that's the way it's being implemented.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Okay. Thank you.
In your brief, when you expounded on a test case from Arizona, at the end of that section, you said that “there was no reported change after the law in rates of parent conflict or legal conflict leading up to the final decree.” We heard testimony earlier today from a lawyer who said that the presumption of equal parenting would actually reduce dramatically the amount of litigation, so this is kind of a conflict. If you could comment on that, it would be helpful.
6:30 p.m.
Prof. William Fabricius
I just have to stand by our data. We polled the state family law community, and overall, they said there was no change in legal conflict or parent conflict leading up to it. That's based on a statewide poll of people involved in the legal community rather than an opinion.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
I guess I'm curious about the nature of the poll. How scientific was this poll?
6:30 p.m.
Prof. William Fabricius
I worked with a committee of people including one of our state judges, one of our family law attorneys, the director of one our conciliation courts—which is the court mechanism in each county that provides services—and also one of our state mental health providers, who is involved with custody evaluations. Each one polled all of their colleagues in the state. We got an 82% response from the conciliation court, 40% from the judges and the mental health people just about, and we got 11% of the attorneys. It's a high rate of response from the entire state, so in my opinion, it was a very good survey of people who've had 40 years of experience with the law.
November 26th, 2018 / 6:35 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
In your testimony, you mentioned the value of shared parenting and the involvement of both parents as much as possible. I take that as given. I think it certainly makes sense. However, I think that it's another matter to go from there to the position of presuming that this exists in the particular circumstances in a given divorce. The law under discussion here is that the best interests of the child are the fundamental principle. Out of that we can use concepts such as maximizing parental time and so forth.
Can you connect those dots better—from the fact that it is a good idea to have shared parenting to the fact that we should presume it in any given case?
6:35 p.m.
Prof. William Fabricius
It would be a legal presumption that's rebuttable. It would not supplant evidence of mental health problems, violence or any of those factors that are already in the law. That's the way that we thought about it in Arizona. It would communicate importantly to parents that the courts are predisposed towards equal parenting time unless there's very good reason against it. That would overcome the widespread impression that there is a maternal bias in courts, which we found in Arizona.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I want to thank each of the witnesses again. You've been very helpful. It is incredibly appreciated.
As Ms. Khalid asked, if you have the background of those polls that you cited, it would be great if you could send that to us, too, so that we have the source of the data.
Thank you so much everyone. The meeting is adjourned.