Status of Women Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2024

[Dr. Lisa Heslop]

I can think of situations that I've been involved with where children were removed from their preferred parent and placed with the parent that they were not comfortable with or wanted to reduce their contact with, without findings of parental alienation and where there was no assessment.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

In reality, are we listening to the child?

[Prof. Jean Mercer]

May I comment on that?

No, we are not listening to the child. In fact, what you will find is that there are members of the parental alienation community, if you want to call it that, who state specifically that to listen to the child is harmful to the child. They say that the child must comply with the family hierarchy and with the authority of, especially, the father, and that to allow them to do otherwise by asking questions, filing their complaints or whatever it may be is in fact directly harmful to their personality development.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you very much for that.

I think Witness 1 wants to say something before I pass the mic over to my colleague, Michelle.

[Witness 1]

In my experience, whether it be CAS or police, these attitudes that stem from parental alienation have really infiltrated all of those institutions. I have had police officers say to me dismissively, we don't think anything happened. Did you want something to have happened to her? I've had them try to get me to agree with them that without saying anything, somehow energetically, maybe I was the reason for her fear.

We've been through multiple CAS investigations, but the threshold to verify those concerns is so high that they understand that there is something going on and they'll acknowledge that, and she is able to articulate, at eight years old, even the spit that hits her face when he's screaming in her face. She has repeatedly disclosed and named it as abuse. They do not listen to the child.

There is such a high threshold. They say that we don't have any physical.... Where is the bruising? I need a time. I need a date. She talks about it like it's happened, but we don't know when exactly, and we need the exact time and date to verify.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you very much for that, Witness 1.

I'm going to pass it to my colleague, Michelle.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I have only 30 seconds, and I'm going to go to Ms. Mercer. I'd really like, on the record, to ask, do you think that this study needs to be opened up further and passed on to a committee like justice, where we can really delve into where the law is and see this looked at further? I feel like this has really been an eye-opening experience for a lot of people who don't know about this.

[Prof. Jean Mercer]

In my opinion, the first step has to be the legislation. After that, follow up with a study, yes.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

That's legislation to do what? Sorry, can you confirm what you mean by that?

[Prof. Jean Mercer]

I mean legislation to make sure that the coercive control act cannot be used against people who are accused of parental alienation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Next, I'd like to welcome Sonia, for five minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being with us.

My first question is for Professor Mercer.

Professor Mercer, you wrote a book, Challenging Parental Alienation: New Directions for Professionals and Parents.

What kind of direction are you talking about in the book, especially regarding orders relying on principles and practices based on parental alienation?

[Prof. Jean Mercer]

It's an edited book. I just want to make sure everybody understands that there are a number of authors here, and I'm not the only one.

Basically, the idea was that we have to examine what has been claimed by advocates of the parental alienation system and to clarify and critique the statements and claims they have made, on which many judicial decisions have been based. Judicial decisions should not be based on those claims if the claims can be shown to be unsupported, which they can readily be shown to be.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

From that, what do judges or court officials need to know in order to properly address the parental alienation disputes or claims, and what kind of support system should be there when people are going through that type of dispute?

[Prof. Jean Mercer]

I would say, first of all, that child custody evaluations need to be done by experienced evaluators who do not have any particular commitment to one set of ideas rather than another. To have someone who is part of the parental alienation community evaluate a child for parental alienation is simply asking for trouble, because they always find it when they look for it.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, this is the most severe case I've ever seen. All the cases, though, are apparently the most severe case that they've ever seen. Nobody ever asks them, how many cases have you seen, or how do you know this?

I think the point there is that attorneys, particularly, who are acting in defence of alleged alienators, have to know how to ask the right questions of the alienation experts, the ones who are claiming that they see parental alienation there. They need to understand, and judges also need to understand, the nature of the research that has been promulgated on this. The fact is that there has never been any independent study of any of these phenomena, and that, therefore, we have only statements by people who are proving what they want to prove.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Heslop, what support systems have been proven...for the children who are experiencing parental alienation, particularly when they are in a high-conflict custody situation? We heard one of the witnesses talking about it being a very complex issue when a survivor has suicidal ideation. What better support system should be in place?

[Dr. Lisa Heslop]

I think that one of the most important things children need in the case they're embroiled in, when there's a back-and-forth, is legal counsel. It would be a really important step to have legal counsel available for children who are in the midst of this.

With respect to the suicidality piece, it's listed in the coercive control legislation, third reading, as an indicator of coercive control. I think that's a dangerous thing to put there, because it puts the onus on the police to assess the mental health status of an individual, to differentiate between coercively controlling behaviour and mental illness or distress, like depression. We know that, as a result of their experience, survivors have high rates of depression, anxiety disorders or other things that could easily be used against them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you, Sonia.

Andréanne, you have two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My questions in this last round are for Ms. Swithin.

You gave examples of people who moved to British Columbia from California. You were talking about reunification therapies, correct?

[Tina Swithin]

We had a lot of reunification camps here in California. Last year we passed Piqui's Law, which is modelled after Kayden's Law. It prohibits judges from ordering children into these intensive programs and ordering custody switches where kids are going to their abuser. As a result, we are seeing them leave our state and go...a lot of them already testify in other states. It is very common to traffic children over state lines or from Canada to the U.S., but now one of our main, most notorious reunification camp owners, Lynn Steinberg, is in British Columbia.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

You talked about camps in the U.S. moving to provinces such as British Columbia and the transfer of children. Ms. Heslop also mentioned cases in Nova Scotia. You even talked about Canada being a hotbed. What exactly did you mean by “hotbed”?

[Tina Swithin]

This is an umbrella business with a very strong network of alienation proponents. Dr. Mercer referred to it as a “cottage industry”. They work together in unison, like a very well-oiled machine. When judges are making orders for reunification treatments, they are sending them to anyone...where it is a known intensive program, or the people who run these intensive programs come to the area where the children are located and do the intensive programs there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Leah, you have two and a half minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Ms. Swithin, I know you're a lawyer, but I also know that you ended up representing yourself in court. I'm glad you have a law background and understand the legal system, but I can't imagine how traumatizing it would be to have to fight for your parental rights and at the same time maintain a legal distance to analyze it.

That brings me to the question about inequalities in the justice system for folks who can't afford proper legal help, who might only qualify for limited legal aid programs. I'm wondering whether you could speak a bit to that.

[Tina Swithin]

Actually, I will make a clarification. I'm not an attorney. I have no legal background at all. I was one of those parents you are describing.

I left a very abusive marriage with less than $200 to my name. I ended up in a women's shelter, afraid for my life and afraid for the lives of my daughters. I had to walk into the court system for the first time in my life and learn how to represent myself. I am not an anomaly. These stories are all over.

I am a very strong, resilient person, but for so many survivors, when they are so beaten down by domestic abuse and coercive control, they crumble. They don't have the ability to do what I did. A huge problem in our system is that there are very few resources for survivors.