Evidence of meeting #126 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was control.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
This brings me to another question. I think there's....
Actually, Witness 1 wanted to comment, and I don't want to take up that time, in case you wanted to add something.
I see your hand's up.
As an Individual
I wanted to add something addressing the bias within the family court system from my own personal experience.
I've been at family court here in Canada for six years. At no point since I entered this system has my abuser, the father of my child, ever been sanctioned or called out, or had any sort of accountability, really, in the family court system.
There have been incidents of failing to return her on days like Mother's Day in order to inflict emotional harm on me. That was brushed aside completely. It was not even addressed. However, my daughter refusing to go and leave with him, despite my following the court order to a T and bringing her for an exchange, and the documented history of abuse that she's alleging about her father.... If she doesn't leave with him, the family court judges label me as interfering with his parenting time and ask me to pay him. He's never once faced any repercussions, and each time, I'm ordered to pay him costs.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Shelby Kramp-Neuman
Thank you very much, Witness 1.
Dominique, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Yet again, I'm extremely concerned by what I'm hearing today, particularly with regard to reunification camps. Personally, I'd call them reform camps. Everyone knows that reform camps are places where they try to re‑educate young people and train them the hard way. It's very worrying. It's quite simply the tangent our study has taken up to now, and that's what we're very concerned about, as parliamentarians.
Ms. Heslop, what can you tell us about these camps? Are the professional associations not a little concerned about what's happening there? Has anyone raised a red flag about what's going on? Should we send in the police or youth services? I'm very concerned by what we're hearing today and by what we've heard throughout our study.
We're talking about corporal punishment. I wouldn't say we're talking about sexual punishment but when you force a child to hug and kiss their father, when there's currently a movement towards consent, there's a problem.
What should we do? It takes time to amend legislation or change attitudes and practices. Training judges and lawyers takes time. I get the feeling that it's ingrained in the way things are done.
Starting now, how can we create positive change?
Associate, Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, Western University
This is a topic that needs a fulsome discussion and in-depth work. We agree that there are legislative solutions that should be considered. One of the things that can perhaps be done more easily is to ensure that children who are subject to these orders have independent legal counsel. There are provisions in Ontario, through the Office of the Children's Lawyer—other provinces have the same sort of service—whereby children can be granted independent legal counsel to assure them of their rights and ensure that their voices are heard in the courts.
I would really encourage you, going back to an earlier comment made by somebody, that this is a topic that is definitely worthy of far more intensive and in-depth work.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Thank you very much.
I understand that once you go to court, the lawyer is there to listen to the child. The problem occurs when the court authorizes the child's transfer.
How is it that our children are leaving Canada to go to the United States? That's the other question we need to be asking. When parents are separated, you need the other parent's permission to cross the border with your child to go to the beach in the summer. However, children are being taken out of Canada and sent to reform schools in the United States. I don't understand that at all. That's the problem. As long as the case is before the courts, things are okay, since there are actions that can be taken, but once the judge decides to send the child outside the country to the United States, there is no further recourse.
Ms. Mercer, what do you think about all that? Did you know that young people were going to camps in the United States?
Prof. Jean Mercer
Yes, I am aware of that fact. I'm also aware that, certainly just a few years ago, therapists from the United States were travelling to Canada to do their routine there.
When you're asking how they can take the child, say, if they're going from Canada to the U.S., the question is this: Who is going to complain? If the other parent complains, that parent is going to be found in contempt of court. They're attempting to counter the orders of the judge. They have been told not to talk about this, but they are talking about it, and, therefore, they're going to be in contempt, and money fines or even imprisonment may follow that.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Thank you, Ms. Mercer. My time is up.
Madam Chair, I think that we'll need to discuss this at a future in camera meeting, but our report needs to be sent to provincial authorities and police forces. People and groups need to know that we are looking at this issue and that we are extremely concerned.
Conservative
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you, Chair.
My sincere thanks to all the witnesses who are here with us today. I've invited most, if not all, of the witnesses on parental alienation, because I was horrified to find out what was going on. I absolutely agree that it's a big part of coercive control, and we can't legislate against coercive control unless we address parental alienation.
There's another issue that was raised to me recently, Chair, by Survivor Safety Matters. I didn't have time to invite them to committee, but I'd like to ask the clerk if maybe she's received the brief, because it's important that we have this information in front of us when we come forward with our recommendations. They're saying that perpetrators who have a history of coercive control also have the right to get personal information about their opponents in court—personal and confidential records—which puts the victims in danger. People who are in court are not able to receive therapy at the same time, even though it's probably the worst time in their lives, because that therapy session could become part of the court's evidence. It includes medical records, psychiatric records, therapeutic records and records of counselling, education, employment, child welfare and adoption. Even personal journals and diaries can be taken by the court and used against victims of coercive control.
I'm clearly not the person who's giving evidence here, but I wanted to go over the brief that they've given me and maybe clarify with the clerk that we have this information in front of us and that we all have access to it.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
It was a collaboration between SAVIS, or Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Services of Halton region, and Survivor Safety Matters.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Shelby Kramp-Neuman
Yes. It has been received. We'll ensure that it's distributed and considered.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you very much, Chair and Clerk.
Getting back to parental alienation, I'd like to again thank our witnesses for being here.
Tina Swithin, I think you coined the phrase that there is an “alienation industry pipeline”. I have your schematic in front of me, of the six-stage process. Can you explain to us, for anybody who's watching and doesn't have this in front of them, what you have described in this six-step process and how you came up with this data and information?
Advocate for Family Court Reform, One Mom's Battle
I've been studying this for the past 13 years. I have an online community of survivors, of 250,000 people around the world, so I have a big overview of this issue. Reunification camps and the pseudo-concept of alienation are of special interest to me. It's a continuation of power and control. When a relationship ends, we encourage domestic abuse survivors to leave the relationship. When they do, the abuser's need for power and control doesn't just dissipate. The children become the pawns in that. It is the abuser's way to maintain power and control.
Research shows that when a mother alleges abuse, they are more likely to lose custody, as we've talked about here. The father—typically, a lot of times it's the father—doesn't have a relationship with the kids. The kids are afraid of him because of abuse, or there was no bond to begin with. As soon as that happens, going back to the “follow the money” we touched on, you then have all these pseudo-professionals. You can be a life coach and run a reunification program. You don't need a degree. They are lying in wait for these families. They specifically target families with more money, because those are the families who can pay for these services, but everybody is—
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
I'm sorry. Just to add to that, we've also heard lots of stories of women who became impoverished because they had to pay these fees. It's not exclusively people with money, right?
Advocate for Family Court Reform, One Mom's Battle
I know of a woman who was forced to cash out her daughter's college fund to pay for a reunification camp. The further down the pipeline you go, you get to reunification therapy. We know that it will not be successful, because you cannot force two people to have a relationship when one is resistant or afraid of the other person. They will stamp it as severely alienated—as Dr. Mercer said, all of these cases are apparently severely alienated—which pushes them further through the pipeline and makes them candidates for these intensive programs, which can cost, for four days, between $15,000 and $40,000 U.S.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
I have another minute, so I'll go to Lisa Heslop.
I believe you have written about engaging fathers who commit family violence. I'm wondering if you can talk about that. What we've heard at this committee is that there are some men who can be reformed and who can learn, and there are others who are narcissists. What do we do in that situation?
Associate, Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, Western University
I think the paper you're talking about was a piece of work we did in a community as a result of a tragic event in our city. The idea was that we would reach out to men who were at moderate to high risk of reoffending. The lower-end perpetrators were being shuffled into the PAR program. Those higher-risk guys, the ones you're talking about, were hopefully going to be kept in custody, or the police would manage their release.
The idea was that instead of taking women, putting them in shelters, and making children leave their schools and their communities and so on, if you start working with the people who cause harm and really focus intervention on those guys, then maybe you'll have some success in being able to reduce the chances that they'll harm someone else, including their children or their partner.
We found that by using the crisis of being arrested and charged, with access for them to one-on-one counselling or really just basic social work that targets the things that created risk in that man's life, we had fantastic results. Compared with another group of men who were charged and were matched in terms of their risk markers, the chances of violent recidivism against their partner were reduced by 50%.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Shelby Kramp-Neuman
Thank you.
Folks, that concludes our panel for today.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank all of the witnesses for your testimony. This also concludes our study on coercive behaviour. Thank you to everyone, including past and present witnesses, who has contributed to this report.
What we'll do now is suspend for about eight to 10 minutes while we go in camera for the last part of the session.
Thank you.
[Proceedings continue in camera]