Thanks, Chair.
There's so much to unpack here, because it's trying to get to the crux of the justice part of this.
In the 42nd Parliament, then justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould amended the Divorce Act in Bill C-78 to introduce the term “family violence”. It says:
“family violence” means any conduct, whether or not the conduct constitutes a criminal offence, by a family member towards another family member, that is violent or threatening or that constitutes a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour or that causes that other family member to fear for their own safety or for that of another person—
It goes on with “and in the case of a child”.
There's a group, the Canadian Equal Parenting Council, and I think it is really important.... We are the status of women committee, so we're here for women, but I think it's really important to put on the record that men are and can often be victims of coercive control as well, and children are often the ones who are hurt.
I guess my question is for you, Ms. Zaccour. When we talk about parental alienation, I just want to read into the record what this states. It states, “Parental alienation happens when one parent coerces or controls a child to reject the other parent without justification. It is distinguished in practice from estrangement, by evidence and professional investigation. Peer-reviewed and published academic research concludes that alienation of children from a parent is emotional abuse. The long-term effects on children are well documented as they lose the capacity to give and accept love from a parent.”
The reconciliation...or the problem is a couple of things. One, which has been brought up, is that we need the right people investigating and interviewing these children. I recently visited the Toba Centre in Winnipeg, and I highly recommend that everybody here look into that. It's a child advocacy centre.
How do we change the law? What happens is the parent could be engaging in coercive control, but once the child is 15 or so, in their teenage years, they don't know that they're in a “coercive control” position per se. This is the whole issue around coercive control. It's very challenging, because people often don't even know they're in an unhealthy relationship. The children are subject to terrible situations, but they don't know that one parent is manipulating them or doing that.
How do we put that into a legal system? How do we train judges to know what that is?
I know I'm asking a million different questions here, but I think there are two recommendations we're trying to get out of this. Should we be making parental alienation illegal, and should we be making coercive control illegal in the Criminal Code?
I'll start with whoever wants to answer.