Madam Speaker, one of the roles of members of Parliament obviously is to bring to Parliamentarians, colleagues in the House, the feelings of their constituents. I have had numerous people come to me who are in these situations. They have given their stories, which the member has related, and the general circumstances that the world is not unfolding. We have situations where people cannot get along, they split up and children turn out to be the victims.
I will support the bill to get it to committee and start talking about it. However, we had two years of cross-Canada consultations that were reported in 1998. The response to that was slow and in fact the response was to have another series of consultations with other people. Now we are coming here.
One of my constituents, and I will speak on his behalf, said that contrary to the commitments of the previous justice minister and the special joint committee's recommendations, this bill is not in the interests of the child, but is in the interests of the divorce industry. It is a serious indictment and I believe it is incumbent on members of Parliament to bring themselves up to speed and to inform themselves on the actual impact of the changes being made here.
The act has not been amended for a very long time. One of the things everyone agreed with, throughout all those hearings and consultations, was that we must put the interests of the children ahead of the interests of the parents. We cannot have everybody have their own way. Parents have their lawyers in court. Who is the lawyer for the children?
I am not sure whether or not we will be able to deal with this balance and put the children's interests first. I am not sure, I have not fully informed myself about the provisions of the bill and I will have to wait until it gets to committee to find out, whether or not we have balanced the interests of the divorce industry and the divorcing couple and children, instead of looking at the balance of the parties affected by the divorce.
I wonder if the member has heard similar concerns about whether or not the bill has somehow skewed or gone out of focus with regard to the principal objectives and that is to put the interests of the children first?