Madam Speaker, it certainly has been my experience in my practice of law and some of the work I did in the area of divorce that the divorce proceedings and process are unnecessarily adversarial, particularly when it has to be considered that a good relationship with both parents on a continuing basis is absolutely vital to the well-being of children.
If there is an adversarial situation where someone is the bad guy and somebody is the good guy, a very difficult situation has been set up for children. Very often they are put in the position of judging who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. Whereas, their real needs and what is best for them would be to sorrowfully accept that parents have differences that are not going to allow them to live together, but that these are both people they be proud of, respect and have good relationship with.
I think moving more toward a mediated approach or mediated settlement of the issues in a divorce situation would be much healthier for the children.
My colleague from Mission-Coquitlam also mentioned the training which is being implemented in Alberta which assists both parents in the kind of training, education and skills building that would be necessary for both parents to continue to play a very positive and very necessary role in the lives of their children. I would certainly recommend that the government look at those kinds of measures to make the legislation more balanced.