Mr. Speaker, many other countries have gone through the same agony of trying to update their divorce and separation laws. Certainly Canada is far behind developments in the western world on that issue.
The road map is there, but the response of the federal government is that it is just one more study in the ongoing debate. The federal government has absolutely no political commitment to take action on the review of family law.
No matter where we go, from province to province, there is an agenda out there in the public, that is, the family law system is broken and in a mess and it needs leadership from the federal government, not an excuse saying that it is a complicated problem of shared federal-provincial jurisdiction and we must discuss it further.
I want leadership from the justice minister and the government with regard to taking some action and bringing the provinces along. We can restore the balance and fairness in family law.
Where appropriate, we can make family law much more child focused. We can develop shared parenting plans instead of seeing children as property. We can work with the shared jurisdiction of the provinces to enhance conflict resolution, non-court processes and unified family courts across the country.
We can implement specifically the recommendations of the report “For the Sake of the Children”, including the specific principle of shared parenting and mutual parental responsibility.
We have to improve the process whereby grandparents have to go through an extra barrier if they feel they have to get legally involved with the situation.
We also have to get the courts to enforce their own orders.
We have to deal with the issue of false allegations in the whole family law context.
There is a tremendous agenda but unfortunately the Liberal government has a track record of no commitment to getting anything done in the family law area.